Elle Abrahams A2: MTV & History of Music Videos Timeline

MTV was established in 1981 and grew rapidly in the U.S. The potential of medium of music videos was quickly realised by artists and the first music video to be played on MTV was The Buggies - 'Video Killed the Radio Star'. In the beginning, MTV ignored black rap videos as it was a white dominant institution and ignored any videos with threatening content (such as gangster rap videos). They also stayed away from small budget videos. Music videos and promos became the new mean to propel an artist to mega stardom. In 1984 it was established as a key music channel and had its own Oscars for music videos. In 1985, American television network VH1 was founded and MTV Europe in 1987. It now had a greater diversity in music genres however as time went on it became more lifestyle orientated and became less of a music channel and more of a general entertainment channel (showed more TV shows).

The Timeline

This timeline shows the most popular music video of the year during different times in history, displaying the change in video styles and the way an artist is presented. In each video, the artist is the main feature of the video and as time continues close ups of the artists face are commonly used.