Music in the 90's

By the 90's having a music video became essential, with the launch of MTV in 1981; artists could advertise themselves worldwide by their videos. Music videos then became a media product in their own right. However production costs were very expensive which some artists may not have been able to afford – artists became very ambitious, making videos a priority. Not long after Michael Jackson released ‘Thriller’, this on its own being a controversy, he then released ‘The Earth Song’ and ‘Black and White’. These two songs both followed some of the features of ‘Thriller’, firstly being that they were over 6minutes long.
During ‘The Earth Song’ we have to wait 1minute after the song starts before any singing actually begins. However the music video does still follow some music conventions, this includes; performance, lip syncing, a narrative and as it’s quite a slow song the cuts are quite slow paced.
http://youtu.be/XAi3VTSdTxU
On the other hand when ‘Black or White’ starts it could be confused as a short film. The name of the song comes up in big, the song going straight to a narrative followed by dialogue – this isn’t a usual convention. After 2minutes of waiting the music actually starts, but you have to wait another minute for any singing to actually begin. Performance is a big part of the video and is used throughout; you can also see how editing has developed since the first video ‘Money For Nothing' by Dire Straits was aired on MTV.
http://youtu.be/F2AitTPI5U0