By music broadcasting you mean what?

Our view of music artist, whether it be through advertising promotion specifically aimed at boosting the hype of an artist, or by reporting exposure of an unbiased source has been evolving for as long as popular music has been spreading to the mass audience.

When the music industry first began to spread film footage of artists, it was through live T.V. events on entertainment shows. The debut of The Beatles on American television on the Ed Sullivan Show brought about an evening in New York that had record low crime-incidence because of the amount of viewers. Specialized T.V. shows brought about a variety of exposure of musical acts through-out the preseeding decades, but in the 1980s with the launch of MTV, a shift occured in the phrase “music television” to be applied to aired music videos. The idea at the time was for term now to apply to 24 hour playing of music videos in the manner of a radio station, with genre themes and hosts of V.J.s. But this model dissipated during the end of the 90s.

The Beatles with T.V. show host Ed Sullivan with link to video of one of their performances

Despite targeted efforts to play certain types of music videos in limited rotation, MTV greatly reduced its overall rotation of music videos throughout the first decade of the 2000s. While music videos were featured up to eight hours per day in 2000, the year 2008 saw an average of just three hours of music videos per day. The rise of the Internet as a convenient outlet for the promotion and viewing of music videos likely signaled this reduction.As MTV expanded, music videos were no longer the centerpiece of its programming. Conventional TV shows came to replace the VJ-guided music video programming. MTV still promotes and plays a limited selection of music videos on its TV channel and web site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Television)

How have we evolved from Sunday night family music showcasing to the broadcasting of MTV?

Originally with the use of television as a means of artists presentation’s the focus was showing a sterilized live show on a studio set with a passive audience. An example of this would be in the case of The Door’s live performance on the Ed Sullivan Show where the lead singer Jim Morrison was asked not to use a line from his lyrics for the song Light My Fire: ”Girl, we couldn’t get much higher”. He did, and was forever banned from the show which aired into the living rooms of millions of nuclear homes across North America. Artists at the time such as The Beatles produced music videos specifically for television broadcast, but this was from their massive popularity making it less practical for them to appear in person. The idea of an relatively unknown artist using the production of a music video as a means of promotion only caught on when music television became the norm for propagation.

The effect of MTV on the music industry has been an object of analysis since its emmergance to popularity in the 1980s, specifically by Post-Modernist Theorists. Andrew Goodwin argues in his book Dancing in the Distraction Factory that “music television needs to be understood in relation to its production context, which is of a very specific nature; video clips themselves are not primarily commodities, but must nonetheless embody use-values while also teasing the audience into seeking out further use-values in the product being advertised.” The rapid expansion, popularity and broadcast of MTV was primarily due to the timing of the political and economic shift that occured in the 1980s with the de-regulatory Neo-Liberalization that occured. As Goodwin states; in both the U.K and U.S., with the rejection of state funding, regulation, and the rise of “free market mechanisms”, the state was pressuring publically funded television to find alternative sources of revenue, thus the only possible mechanisms for financing the new services were adversiting revenue and direct sales/rental fees. Thus there was the rise of cable, and continual exposure to the music industry’s continually expanding de-regulated marketing model.

The political and economic state of the world is certainly not as it was in the 1980s. We now live in post-Bush imperialism era, but it will most likely be some time until the business model of his time will be noticeably shifted. The promotion structure of the MTV conglomerate network however has always had the mandate of continually re-inventing its image. Whether it be in the actual imagery in pushing the envelope of being cool, to the genre mandate and broadcasting bias that they may have to specific music and artist. For years MTV was criticized for not having a strong representation of ‘black’ music, that is, broadcasting content by black artists, specifically that music which fell under the genre of R&B and Rap which has a large percentage of its greatest artists’ being of African American decent. Whether this was in any way a prejudiced action, or was simple catering to the popular taste of the time is still being debated. That was the 1980s, the time of the gaunt British with catchy love songs, whether they actually were British like The Cure, Kate Bush, or George Michael, or having the image of it as was often the case of Debra Harry, the B-52′s  and R.E.M. Not to say that the 1980s popular music scene was completely made up of british and brit-wannabes, but they certainly dominated the sound, image and charts of the 1980s.

MTV in a symbiotic relationship with the music industry changed with the taste, and now (when it does play music videos) caters to the popularity of R&B and Rap artists. Moreover it hosts its own very well established MTV Video Music Awards Show which showcases the biggest and best of the years music videos. The validity of this show has been criticized, however, it’s promotional capabilities have not.

MTV2's logo...really, alternative?

MTV has long since lost the title of being the herald of music videos, and has now taken a model of showcasing reality T.V. shows in the attempt to have more teenagers tuning in the age of the internet. Shows such as The Hills demonstrate a new sort of hegemony or ideology of marketing, where isntead of the advertising of items being done through music subtly, there is the out-right use of product placement in this fantasy world of youth. the music industry is no longer the primary tool of marketing, and this fabricated reality is doing a much more poignant job of advertising than endorsement or idolizing messaging in music videos ever did. This, as Nicholas Garnham puts it, is an example of the music television services, the close fusion of programming and advertising, the mixing of promotional and critical/informational rhetorics, and the culture of cynicism that often comes out of the programming itself are effects of its economic organization. Thus, if the post-70s struggle of recession had been different in its outcome the relationship of music television as applied to ideology would have had a different view, at least according to political economy theorists. Therefore, the post-Bush time which approaches now, is will likely be dependent on these relationships.

MTV as well as similar music based television such as Much Music and VH1 now more often showcases artist in the context of having live concert events in studios, doing interviews, and covering shows live, usually for the purpose of an newly released albums promotion. That is now it’s main contribution to promoting artists. With the readily available access of music videos on the internet, their exposure is now primarily received through non-live feed or download. In the time of post-Live-Aid where artists are know continually putting on shows of stadium  proportions, MTV often uses its funding to film the events in a quality of filming style that does indeed outcompete with the continual feed of amateur footage of concerts from a mosh-pit/camera-phone standpoint. This MTV captured footage is often now posted on YouTube by amateurs with TV recording or by piracy, but the original source is from the promotion machine of MTV. 

There is now an argument that the music video as a medium of selling the band/single/album as an item of economy might be dead, but music videos are now becoming increasingly an art form, quite often hardly featuring the band members at all and using the song as a means to communicate a story.  With the exponential advances in special effects and computer graphics the music video form is now often a platform for experimental film directors. In the light of the fall-out of the Conservative/Republican de-regulatoy manadate for marketing and business model, the symbiotic relationship with the business of music broadcasting and the music industry will be interesting to observe.

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