The fall and rise of the music video
EVERY two months the British Film Institute hosts a celebration of new music videos. “Bug” draws a keen, arty crowd—demand for tickets greatly exceeds supply. Competition for screen time is fierce, too: David Knight, who picks the videos, receives 150-200 submissions for each show. A once tawdry media product has become fashionable.
At its commercial peak, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the music video simply gushed cash. It was essentially an advertisement for recorded music, supplied free by a record company to a channel—MTV—for which viewers paid, and which also showed actual advertisements. …
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