When we launched the archive in 2020, our plan was to focus on contemporary material — things from 2005 onward that existed in digital form and could be sourced, cleared, and added without too much trouble. Pre-digital material was going to be a future problem.
It became a present problem almost immediately. The most consistent feedback we got in the first year from members was that the archive was skewed toward recent work in a way that underrepresented directors with long careers. A member who was interested in Mark Romanek, for instance, would find his post-2005 work but miss the videos that established his reputation — the Nine Inch Nails and Madonna clips from the mid-1990s that are genuinely important in the history of the form.
So in late 2021 we started seriously working on pre-digital acquisition. What follows is an account of what we found and what that process involved.
Where pre-digital material actually lives
The answer is: scattered, inconsistently preserved, and often legally complicated. There are a few categories:
Broadcast archives. Many 1980s and early 90s videos were broadcast on TV but never released in a proper home video format. A significant percentage of what exists of this material is in broadcast archives — the BBC, ZDF, VPRO in the Netherlands, RAI in Italy, various national music channel archives. Access to these archives ranges from straightforward (VPRO has been historically cooperative with non-commercial archival projects) to essentially impossible (major US broadcast networks treat their archives as commercial assets).
VHS and Betamax collections. A surprising number of people taped music videos off TV in the 1980s and early 90s and still have those tapes. The SpectraVid membership community turned out to be unusually useful here — within our first year, we'd connected with collectors in Belgium, the UK, and Japan who had systematic archives going back to 1983. We've worked with three of them to digitise material that wasn't available anywhere else, including a VHS of a one-time broadcast of a Prefab Sprout special from 1985 that appears to be the only surviving copy.
Director and production company archives. Some directors kept copies of everything they made. Production companies that were active in the 80s and 90s occasionally have tape libraries, though many of these companies no longer exist or have changed hands enough times that their archives are inaccessible. We've had more success reaching directors directly than going through production companies.
Promotional VHS and LaserDisc releases. Labels released compilation tapes and LaserDiscs through the 80s and 90s — things like the EMI Music Video compilations, or the Geffen Records video releases, or the Japanese market LaserDisc collections that often contained material that never appeared elsewhere. These can be found through collector networks, eBay, and occasionally specialist dealers. Quality is variable but often better than broadcast recordings.
Quality decisions
We set a floor of roughly "watchable" rather than a floor of "good." This was a deliberate choice, and it's one that still generates occasional debate in the members forum.
The argument for a quality floor is that VHS-sourced material that's been through three generations of tape degradation doesn't represent the work as it was made. The argument against is that the alternative is often no material at all, and a degraded copy is infinitely more useful for research and archival purposes than nothing.
We came down on the side of preserving the degraded copy, with clear metadata noting the source and quality grade. We use a five-point scale that runs from A (original digital source, broadcast quality) through E (VHS multi-generation dub, significant noise). About 140 videos in the pre-digital section are graded D or E. We flag these prominently. When a better source becomes available, we replace it.
What's still missing
The most significant gap is probably early 1980s material from independent and post-punk artists in the UK and US. A lot of this was made on very small budgets for regional broadcast slots and was never compiled or re-released. Some of it was made on video tape that has since deteriorated past recovery. Some of it may still exist somewhere — in a director's garage, in a label's warehouse, in someone's VHS collection — but we haven't been able to find it.
We're also missing most pre-2000 material from markets that weren't covered by the major English-language music press. Nigerian, Ghanaian, and other West African music video material from the 80s and 90s is particularly sparse. We know it was being made, because we've found references in contemporaneous press — but the videos themselves are mostly gone.
If you have material that might help — tapes, digital files, knowledge of where things might be found — please reach out at hello@spectavid.xyz. We take provenance seriously and will credit every contribution.