10 Moments That Changed Rock Music History
7. The Launch Of MTV
This is one of those moments in music history that was not without its drawbacks...
For better or worse MTV officially launched on 1 August 1981 and the impact was phenomenal. If a band had a music video played on MTV over the next decade it was almost a guarantee for success. It opened up audiences to music they might never have otherwise been exposed to. The industry blew up resulting in an all time high in sales.
But, with this change in the industry came the need for bands to make music videos. Sure, bands still needed a certain sound to get noticed, but if there was anything even slightly appealing about an act, then record labels were more than willing to pump money into a video that would sell an image rather than a sound.
By the time the '90s came around MTV was still playing music videos, but a significant amount of their content was celebrity centred pop culture drivel. In many ways this was the start of reality TV. We didn't deserve this.
But even the negative push back yielded some stellar music. After all Blur frontman Damon Albarn came up with the concept for the Gorillaz after becoming sickened by the celebrity toting content MTV was pushing during the late '90s.