History of chosen Medium

Music videos have evolved over the years and become a lot more popular when advertising a song. Nowadays music videos are a necessity when an artist launches a song. This is because of all the different technologies that are out here for people to view music videos. For example the internet is a way of viewing videos through the website YouTube. YouTube has a massive viewing rate therefore it is a huge market for artists to promote their music. 

• More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
• Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube – that's almost an hour for every person on Earth, and 50% more than last year
• 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
• YouTube is localized in 56 countries and across 61 languages
• According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US adults aged 18-34 than any cable network
• Millions of subscriptions happen each day, and the number of people subscribing has more than doubled since last year

This was the first ever music video to be made in 1894. George H. Thomas had the idea to show a collection of images to the audience whilst the song was being played, showing the narrative of the song. ‘The little lost child’ was by Joseph W. Stern and Edward B. Marks. The first music video was created as an ‘illustrated song’ which was still pictures which where coloured by hand and where shown by projecting them on a screen at the same time as the music. From this it helped gain more sells for the song after the ‘illustrated song;’ was created.

30 Years later....

The Warner brothers released a series of 5 animated musical shorts to show the songs of the time.

· Just a Gigolo

· Say a little prayer for me

· When your lover has gone

· For you

· Crying for Caroline’s

When television came about it became a major influence that caused interest in moving pictures and music videos to evolve. Programs such as ‘Top of the Pops’ made a massive impact on the music industry by making it much more interesting and engaging for the audience.

The video by the Buggles, 'video killed the radio star', was the first video played to be played on TV show, MTV. Since then more and more TV channels have come about just based on music videos. MTV has more than just one channel now, it has various channels just based on one particular genre.

• 4Music
• VIVA
• Kerrang
• Scuzz

Even the popular British Sky Broadcasting Group have created a whole section on just music. And this gives you lots of channels of various genres on with music videos.

Furthermore you can even download music off your Xbox or ps3. Music has evolved so much that it can be viewed on absolutely any digital device.

The influence from music videos has really changed the music industry creating a better way to enjoy the song itself. Furthermore it can really relate to the narrative of the song and give out a better understanding.Music videos can be anything from performance, to just a narrative and abstract. But even these can go more in depth. Artists like to stand out in the industry, take Lady Ga Ga for example, she always has something very extraordinary and unique. It gives you another interpretation of the song itself. Because if we just listened to the song on its own with no image we could just think it was good and like it. Where as when a video is put to it, it causes conversation and more of an opinion. 

I can be a way of the artist interpreting their ideas and how they reflect it in their eyes. This can link in with the theory of Stewart Hall as his theory relates to us (the audience) being encoders as we encode all the information.Media texts are encoded by the producer (People who make the media texts) and that the texts are full of ideological values and messages. We decode the text but due to us all having a different opinion we do not respond to the text in the same way. .

For example the media text 'Wrecking Ball' by Miley Cyrus had a huge outcry as it was seen as unacceptable and us (the audience) didn't understand why she was naked and doing promiscuous acts in her video. This is because it wasn't encoded properly by the artist so therefore we interpreted it wrong. Where as Miley Cyrus stated that: ‘I think the video is much more, if people get past the point that I'm naked and you actually look at me.

‘You can tell that I actually look more broken than even the song sounds.’ Her interpretation and meaning f the song is very different to how the audience see's it. She see's it as a reflection on her feelings and loss of her boyfriend, being 'broken'. Where as the audience have encoded it as her trying to shock people and get attention. That she's not a little girl any more and wants to get away from this Hannah Montana identity.