RM - A Brief History of Music Videos

During the 1980s music videos came into the limelight after the channel MTV was setup basing the channel around the medium. The first music video MTV showed was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. Although this was not the first station to show music videos the first one was BBC. The long-running British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s, this meant a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week.

However music videos have nearly been in existent for a hundred years but were called several different names including talkies, Screen Songs, Promotional clips and Musical films.
Although modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of the accompanying single and album.

During the 2000s lo-fi videos started being made. Lo-fi is made with minimal budgets and not much shot variation. The most common lo-fi music video is called a one-shot where the entire video is one shot. The reason for these types of music video becoming what it is known for today was due to the shift towards internet broadcasting and a rise in popularity for user-generated video sites with YouTube being the leader in the market. Artists including R.E.M. and Tom Jones have had lo-fi music videos for their singles.