Music Video History

in 1974 hit australian hit TV show " countdown" played a vital role in the music video industries early development. clips of music videos was used as a method of promoting new music artists as well as appearing on the show. the music industry eventualy realised the impact and marketing potential of promoting with music clips as one of the most notible artists to appear was hard rock band A.C.D.C , as three of there most notable 80's hits appeared on countdown , which aired in 22 countries.

Before MTV , "video concert hall" was the first music program on american television, airing in june 1981. night flight was also one of the first programs to be shown of US cable tv pre-dating MTV by only a few months. mtv was released in 1981 begining the golden age of Music Television. many pop artists used mtv to create their own image , aswell as promoting themselves. in 1985 mtv launched vh1 ,  featuring softer music for an older audience rather than a younger one. in 1987, mtv europe launched and then in 1991 mtv asia. the most expensive music video made to date is micheal jackson and janet jacksons " scream" costing $7 million to produce. during the mid 90s further international mtv channels were aired, mtv latin america 1993, mtv india 1996 and mtv madarin in 1997. in 1996 mtv also aired another channel called M2 (MTV2) as an alternative or older music video channel. by the mid 00's mtv aired more reality tv shows like jackass, cribs, jersey shore, pimp my ride, my sweet 16, etc rather than regular featurings of music videos.
the typical generic conventions of a music videos, are that there are frequent cuts by far (5-10) being the longest shot. dancing and extras are very common, and the artist is normally lip syncing to the song