Changing Roles of the Music Video

I feel as though the Music Video has changed it's role quite a bit in the last 30 years. They started out as a way to celebritize musicians and make them know in face, presentation, and image along with their music, but slowly became a less prominent part of musical advertising and become more of an artistic form all on their, just becoming part of a band's image and persona. MJ and Madonna's music videos made them recognizable and celebrities, and you could easily turn on the TV and see the music video fairly often. This contributed to their celebrity status, and was more of a tool to make them into celebrities. As music videos become more commonplace, I feel as though they slowly adapted into an art form all on their own. Part of what I feel contributed to this was MTV's transition into a network that rarely deals with music anymore. Even the second channel they created solely for music just reruns their shows and rarely shows music videos. I honestly think this is sort of sad, and now you have to go online and specifically search for an artist's music videos and although they are available, they are rarely seen on TV or advertised anywhere. What this has done for the music video is that it allows for the bands and directors to work collaboratively for a more artistic approach to music videos. One exception to the rule, of course, is Lady Gaga whose new Telephone video has been advertised a lot, but almost exclusively on the internet. Maybe this is the new place for music videos, pushing music even more into the realm of the digital and the internet, which is a whole other argument. Mostly, I think that music videos have changed from tools to create image and celebrity to a more artistic form that contributes but does not wholly create a musician's image.