Offie Mag

“Music videos remain a steadfast artform, marred only by the call for more: more collateral, more creativity, more ‘content’.”

Elsa Monteith for Off Licence Magazine ISSUE FOURTEEN: The Internet. Order your copy here.

It’s the sound and vision edition, the movable, mutable, YouTube-ification of musical activities, the three-minute thirty-second heater playing out on the screen in front of you. Overlooked by some but appreciated by many, it’s the music video, baby.

1981 saw the birth of MTV, an American cable television network that began as a 24-hour platform for music videos played on a widely celebrated continuous reel of audiovisual entertainment. MTV’s debut music video broadcast was of the aptly titled track, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles, featuring a haphazard three-minute video originally shot in leafy Teddington, an affluent suburb nestled in the borough of Richmond-upon-Thames in South West London. A far cry from the New York streets that MTV was rooted in, these Brits abroad marked a gargantuan shift in how we listen, observe, and engage with contemporary music culture. Over two decades later, and Channel U was launched in the midst of the early noughties on British soil, shifting the narrative once again to focus on the British grime scene, featured, crucially, on a channel included on Sky TV. Channel U was a departure from MTV’s initial indie and rock-esque musical heritage, instead primarily playing videos of music of Black origin, something MTV was heavily criticised for historically overlooking and erasing, particularly in the early days.

2005 hits and so does YouTube, a venture pioneered by three ex-PayPal employees that sparked an unprecedented revolution in how the world encounters visual media, whilst accelerating a wave of social impact that we still feel the rumble of today. Not long after that in 2006 and the now late but highly esteemed Jamal Edwards picked up his handycam and started documenting rap freestyles which he’d upload to his YouTube channel, SB.TV. A groundbreaking platform that has shot countless underground artists to untold fame, Jamal Edwards’ impact on the scene was unparalleled. After SB.TV, the likes of Link Up TV, GRM Daily, and Mixtape Madness all came to the forefront, each bearing their own legacy, but now departed from the gogglebox, and instead settled in the comfy armchair of the World Wide Web.

Pulling up to the current landscape of audiovisual entertainment, and we are met with a scene obsessed with the even short(er) form. The dimensions of a music video have shifted to fit the stunted, hand-held screen of our phones, shrinking not just the frame, but also the span of our attention. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have forged arbitrary measures on how long a video can play for as a permanent post or even as a temporary story, leading to a fresh generation of artists impeded by the limits set by the powers that be in Big Tech. We’ve seen artists like Tierra Whack create a full, 15-track album made up entirely of one-minute songs, and whilst this might be a purely creative decision, it also fits the bill for an Insta-ready PR masterpiece. Whack World is accompanied by a stunning visual album that captures the absurdity of Tierra’s artistry – at once totally bizarre and uniquely coherent, the Whack World music video is a stellar example of short(er) form audiovisual entertainment becoming complicit with the algorithm, without compromising the cultural integrity of the artform.

If we turn back the clock to the heady days of 2012, Vine was one of the first social media platforms to champion short-form media as an accessible and mainstream current of contemporary culture. Starting at just six seconds, Vine was, for some, a ubiquitous exercise in creativity, encouraging users to catch attention and retain interest in just a tenth of a minute. Competing platforms were taking note, with Instagram eventually graduating to 15-second clips on stories and launching the beginning of reels, which was a response to TikTok, the now ever-present platform that has captured the nation’s heart, soul, and screen time. Musicians started to learn how to bend the platform to their advantage, creating “sounds” that would go viral, brief snippets of their tracks that suddenly generated an unprecedented visibility, and, in some cases, income. This is a shift, one reflected in the move from short-form to even shorter-form media. Achieving success in this framework is, for some, less about good music making, but now, a case of good music marketing.

Music videos are a remarkable way to market music. Award-winning music video director and visual campaign strategist Reece Proctor has a rich history of creating wide-reaching visual media, namely for “best rapper alive” Nadia Rose, with their music video “Skwod” reaching an impressive 14 million views. Reece speaks to the way that music videos have always been a space for advertising both for musicians and for labels, but notes how for new artists, he sees a future where they’ll be redirecting their budget from music videos into short-form content that can be posted on socials instead. “I think that’s how an artist will maintain longevity in their career”, Reece shares, “artists really need to be realising where their target audience are watching things and interacting, and right now, that’s young people on their phones”.

Moving from the portrait visual content found on our phones to the landscape dimensions of music videos destined for a slightly bigger screen, directing duo Broken Antenna have an expansive catalogue of highly respected music video work that spans everyone from Hak Baker and Joe Armon-Jones, to ISSUE THIRTEEN interviewee, Fatima.

In speaking to Broken Antenna, they also reflect on how the demand for collateral social media “content” to promote the music video itself actually provides a new means of creativity. “You can make the world bigger”, they say, a nod to the expanse that can be brought to life in three short minutes, “we wouldn’t have done all the extra creative world-building if it was just aired on MTV and watched in isolation”.

Music videos remain a steadfast artform, marred only by the call for more: more collateral, more creativity, more “content”. The future will follow the same trajectory we are tightroping today; a constant movement forward, and a hunger for a development that’s never quite satiated. In much the same way we have evolved from the precision of 35mm film to the carefree disposability of digital cameras, the tools of the internet continue to arm us with the ability to shift from the long(er) to the short(er), for better or for worse. What comes next will define the upcoming evolution of audiovisual entertainment, and deliver, in time, a new generation of music video pioneers.

Words by Elsa Monteith. @elsa__yeah.