Music television

With the development of television-based entertainment programs in the 20 century a completely new type of entertainment appeared on the basis of television. Music videos (sometimes called music clips, or simply clips) have become very popular from the very beginning. Their main feature is the visualization of a musical composition according to a director's idea. It's obvious that music as it is cannot be visualized in one unified way, so the process of making music videos can be regarded as a new trend in creative work that is absolutely different from fiction movies or TV shows. Music videos are usually done by film directors as creating only music videos exclusively is a rather rare phenomenon – you can't make them on an industrial basis.

Music videos are sometimes seen as merely a marketing tool to promote a performer's musical composition and to push up the sales of his or her works. That's why the nature of music videos as separate creative works or simply marketing devices has been debated for years.

At first they appeared in the 1980 in the USA. Today they have evolved considerably together with the increase of the number of the music styles. Music videos use various styles of filmmaking: animation, documentaries, live action and many others.

As the number of music videos increased, a new special TV channel was created exclusively for showing them. The first well-know channel was MTV which broadcasted music videos twenty four hours a day seven days a week.