Music Channels

Music channels televise music videos almost exclusively. This type of channel became popular with the start of MTV. MTV is by far the most well known and successful music channel in the world.

Since MTV started broadcasting in 1981, MTV has revolutionized the music industry, not only contributing to the rise in music video production, but has started a whole host of award shows for popular culture including the MTV EMAs, MTV Movie Awards and the MTV VMAs. MTV award shows are known to be controversial, therefore many celebrities try hard to find a way to be more outrageous than the previous year and be the star that everyone is talking about afterwards.

The success of the channel has also spawned multiple others under the MTV brand. This include MTV Rocks, MTV Hits, MTV Classic and MTV Dance. All of these play music of a specific genre rather than the broader spectrum of music played on the standard MTV channel.

 

Following the success of MTV, many other music channels have begun broadcasting including Viva, 4Music and TheBox.

TheBox in Britain and Ireland is a music channel brought over by Vincent Monsey who discovered the American channel in Miami in 1991.

The American version of the channel was originally called 'The Jukebox Network', started in 1985.

The channel is best known for often having first play of music videos. Many videos make their UK or world premiere on the channel. This was particularly influential in the release of the Spice Girls song 'Wannabe'. The music video premiered on TheBox months before the songs official release date. The channel is heralded as one of the forces that propelled the Spice Girls to stardom.