In the early 20's and 30's there was a new type of entertainment for music as an outlet, it was music being shown through videos. Music was a popular social culture around this time, the videos that were being made were more experimental with a clear meaning behind the videos, not just for entertainment. From this 'soundies' were born, this meant that you could see the artist not just the music. This was very popular in America in diners and through time it spread across to Europe, but it was in the form of a scorpitone. (which was the Europeans version)
What these were were like jukeboxes that you could play music off of but at the same time you would see the artist as well. so that the public could see their artist and not just listen to them.
Music changed again in the 1960's it was the dawn of the term teenage and with that came the power of the youths. The Beatles were famous (and still are to this day) and they conquered America... one of the few artists to do this successfully. With this they had also created teenage girl hysteria. The 60's was an era of hippys and flower power, and there was a scent of love in the air, everywhere. The 60's brought something different to the stiff and starched music before, everything was groovy man and music took another experimental approach with the use of drug intake and the public could relate to the artists that were taking them.
When the 1970's hit the 60's into the last decade it shunted out most of all this love and flower power stuff, it brought this cool glam rock gods to the stage and artist were beginning to get immortalised, with the same style as The Beatles, bands were getting worshipped. With the likes of Kiss and Alice Cooper on stage there was just the slightest stirr of difference. The 70's were the complete opposite to the 60's and started off rock artists onto a whole new genre.
Glam rock was so popular wit the artists like David Bowie and T Rex being the main culprits, it also brought a brand new idea... Top Of The Pops, artists could now be shown on TV, and anyone could have access to them, it was a massive promotion, and if the artist was there, they performed live, of not they would get a music video played, and they could also see how popular they were, so the music and its surrounding had progressed some more.
The next big thing in the 1980's was MTV, it was discovered and introduced to audiences all over the world. The first video to EVER be shown on MTV was The Boggles with 'Video killed the radio star, an apt start to a new era! This was received well by the public and their response helped the artists realise what they could be tapping into. The artists then began to release more songs and make more videos for multiple songs that they had released at the same time. The effect was tremendous, with all sorts of videos, being channelled straight into someone's living room. The bigger it got, the more creative the ideas were, and bands began filming outside of studios. The only drawback was that the technology was very basic back then, but things were a lot more experimental. The artists across the board began to realise that this was the key to success and getting noticed and so the cost went up and up.
In the 1990's even more bands came onto the scene and it was like an explosion, not only was there the old fashioned genre based on genre based on genre, but everything came out of the woodwork, there was the grunge scene, with artists like Nirvana and The Offspring. There was the indie Brit pop, with Oasis and Coldplay and more alternative artists began to be more mainstream. Then there was bucket loads of electronica (technology had improved leaps and bounds) the sub genres were almost ridiculous, there was Drum and Bass, Garage, Happy Hardcore, Goa Trance. (which then lead to the famous Goa club in Ibiza with holds its reputation to this day)
With the 1990's the quality was better and there was different music channels too. Kerrang! and Smash Hits gave even more of an assault to the public's sences, bombarding them with all of this new material. Needless to say it was an instant hit with teens across the board.
The dawn of a new millennium. The 2000's have been centred around the internet and downloading all you can as quick as you can. YouTube is probably one of the biggest agents out there, giving unknown artists a chance to make fame for themselves; so its not just for the rich with reputations. A prime example of this is Justin Beiber, he really did come from nothing but YouTube publicised him across the world and now he is making a hell of a lot of money. The problem is that the entertainment factor is taking over the talent and unknown artists are becoming famous because of their video or they are just good entertainment, its less about the music in some cases. Also the sales of music has really gone down, nowadays there is no need to to to the shops and buy the latest album when you can buy it from ITunes or Amazon, the problem is that there are fairly good quality cheap versions of a record that are being downloaded illegally and are making now money from this at all.
Because of the technology that we are constantly developing the audiences will change with it and who knows what the next decade will hold for music and artists as well as the public that listen to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment