The Day Music Took Over Popular Culture

Essay by kingtittiesUniversity, Bachelor'sA, November 2004

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One of Scotland's top promoters Geoff Ellis once said that, "MTV has transformed the music industry and has led the other TV channels in how music is presented." With that statement said Scotland along with the rest of the world watches MTV in their living rooms twenty four hours a day. Scotland even has its own branch of MTV music awards, called the Scottish Music Television's Video Awards. "Telly changed forever when MTV became the first channel to feature music videos as its prime source of programming (Croce)." The idea was to use the station as a platform to showcase the emerging music video format. At first there were very few videos to watch on MTV (Music Television), but with the popularity of these videos increasing, record companies began to catch onto the trend MTV was setting. MTV was slowly becoming the launch pad to musical stardom. "One of the biggest impacts is that the promotional video is now an essential part of any band's marketing campaign."

stated Geoff Ellis. With MTV's inception, bands were now becoming popular and gaining support from MTV viewers. It was cool to be on MTV in the beginning, if your band had a video on the channel, you were popular. Now MTV will either make you or break you as a recording artist. MTV is the standard and if you are not on this channel you do not belong. After all MTV is the oldest and most influential American cable network specializing in music related programming.

On August 1, 1981, with the words "Ladies and gentleman, rock and roll," spoken on camera by John Lack, one of the creators of MTV, a musical giant was hatched, and music videos became the newest fad in America. The Buggles, a small time rock band were...