The fine art of commercial freedom: British music videos and film culture

In this article on the British music video industry, Caston presents original data about the turnover, structure, and personnel of the industry in 1998 based on primary research conducted for Promo, then an imprint of Music Week. She describes the development of the British industry in three different phases from emergence in the late 1970s to consolidation and de-professionalization in the 2000s. She looks at the impact of British music video production on film culture and argues that it has functioned as a talent development ground, and has had a broader and deeper impact on national film culture than has yet been documented or analysed. She argues that in the UK, the industry developed not only as a response to increased demand for content from MTV but from shifts in the avant-garde and higher education. She calls for urgent preservation of the British music video archive in order to enable further research to be undertaken