It’s the end of music videos as we know it (but we feel fine). Death and resurrection of Music Videos in the YouTube Age

Music videos were one of the most interesting things happened in the media landscape of the eighties and the nineties. Its “golden age” is long gone, and the Internet has caused the end of music videos as we knew them. But music videos are born again, in a new form and a new space: YouTube. Music videos have their origins in the radio programming of popular music. The idea behind modern music videso was to produce a “clip” of images for repeated programming on TV, to promote songs the same way it happened on radio. Music videos were conceived as a short film paid by the music industry, to be programmed by TV channels. On one side, the label, the PR and the management of the artists, in this way, are able to construct and control his “image”. On the other side, a lot of time (and money) is saved: the artist itself doesn’t need to be taken around in different TV shows to present his song.