Title: Video Killed the Radio Star and took over the Web
Web References: New Wave; The Buggles; Video Killed the Radio Star; MTV; VJs; DJ; Cultural Impact of MTV; Prezi; Internet History; URL; Youtube; Youtube Wiki; Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Kunle Bristow; Bruce Lin; Catalytic Engineering
We Can’t Rewind We’ve Gone Too Far
It is 1979, New Wave British Band, The Buggles pen and release Video Killed the Radio Star. The song is a pop infused track about the concerns of mixed attitudes towards 20th-century inventions and machines for the media arts. Remember, the personal computer is not ubiquitous yet! Computers can be found in universities and businesses. The music industry is shifting from instruments to a synth-infused, drum-machine based sound.
Fast forward to 1981, Video Killed the Radio Star is the first music video ever shown on the newly created MTV channel. The purpose of
this channel is to play music videos guided by television personalities known as “video jockeys,” or VJs. This is a play on the term DJ used for radio and later used for people who play music for an audience in a nightclub or concert venue.
“MTV creators knew its cultural and musical impact would be huge, and the selection of ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ served as the perfect harbinger for its impending significance.” Music became visual. Radio becomes heavily influenced by what’s going on with MTV. Video and graphic technology advances and the music industry as a whole grows as a result of the change. Alongside these developments, the computer and video game world is exploding. As well, there is new mobile phone technology. This Prezi captures the timeline nicely. Now, let’s watch the video that changed things.
Fast forward button isn’t necessary for this next bit. I’ll just skip to 2005. Computers are ubiquitous. Email is common place. Social media is becoming a thing. It is still very new but emerging. Cell phones are pervasive. The internet is king of telecommunication. In fact, the Internet’s takeover of the global communication landscape was almost instant in historical terms: it only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunications networks in the year 1993, already 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007. Okay back to 2005 for a second. There was a new URL on the block: www.youtube.com. Youtube is a video sharing website. It is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.
It is now 2015. Cell phones have turned into smartphones capable of anything your laptop can do. Youtube is 10 years old and king of the internet and the internet is with you wherever you go. Not to mention, everyone is using some form of social media be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube or something else. Now, as an individual I can create a video with my smartphone and the most obvious place for me to store these videos is online and on Youtube given that it has the lions share of the market. Storing allows my video to preserved somewhere other than on my phone and allows me to share. See my video.
Now, if it is so easy for me to make, upload, and share consider what businesses must be thinking about the value of video. See the infographics below to gain some insight into the value of video for businesses.
52% of worldwide marketing professionals deem video to be the type of content with the best return on investment. This is during a period of time when many businesses are still fumbling to determine how to use video effectively and how to reap the benefits of social media.
In keeping with the theme, I connected with Kunle Bristow. He sent me this video and told me “your audience will thank you.”
Kunle mentions that many people are accessing video through mobile technology. So it is important to keep videos short and sweet. Given this information, I connected with Bruce Lin of Catalytic Engineering to discover his thoughts on the future of social media and particularly hardware. He emailed me comments but I thought you might like to hear them.
Lessons for Others
Be Brief – videos are a visual tool. Pictures are worth a 1000 words.
Be Multi-Platformed – Both Kunle and Bruce discuss the impact of mobile technology. So make sure your business has an online presence that can be viewed across computer, mobile, and tablet technology. If your business is expanding into areas that are rural or remote consider this when utilizing video as a business tool. If your video can not be viewed, you may lose your audience.
Be Bold & Vibrant – videos encourage potential customers to click links within emails and maintain email subscriptions.