History Of Music Videos

The history of music videos dates right back to 1894 when George Thomas, an electrician at the time, along with many others were hired by 'sheet music'  to promote the sale of their song - 'The Little Lost Child'.

Through the use of a magic lantern, Thomas was able to project a series of small images onto a screen, in sync to live performances, which proved to be a form of popular entertainment, known as the illustrated song. This was the first step for music videos.

In 1926 however is where music videos really took off with the arrival of talkies where many short films were produced. They were labelled 'shorts' and featured in cinemas as a short film before the main film started. For example St Louis Blues a famous videos broadcasted until 1932 with Blues singer Bessie Smith featuring in it.

Soundies were musical films that often included short dance sequences and were produced from 1940-47.
Musical films were important in the development of music videos. Many well known music videos have imitated and took inspiration from classic hollywood musicals. For example Madonnas music video for the song Material Girl, was closely influenced by the musical featuring Marlyn Munroe - Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend.

Promotional clips were introduced in the 1950s. The scopitone, which was a musical jukebox, invented in France and produced by french artists such as Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Brel. An example of a promotional clip is Bob Dylans song Subterranean Homesick Blues. This song was a monochrome clip filmed by D.A. Pennebaker in 1966.

In the late 1970s the British television programme Top of the Pops aired. Which gave viewers an insight to the videos as they were not able to view them on YouTube! Promo videos were made in order to promote the artist, a famous promo video is David Bowie - Ashes to Ashes.

!980s MTV aired which really took music videos to the next level.

in the 1980s music videos improved and developed massively through the use of video recording and editing equipment, and visual effects. One of the biggest and most successful music videos of all time: Michael Jackson - Thriller which was a 14 minute video that cost $500'000 to make, in spite of this it was a huge success raking in millions of dollars. This song also encouraged MTV to publish videos of African Americans.

In the 1990s music videos were shown in a different light as videos were more artistic and creative. This included videos from R&B groups such as Boyz 2 Men and Rock songs from bandss such as Nirvana.

2000s saw the rise of the internet. Video sharing went huge through the use of YouTube Google and Facebook and MySpace. Here songs would go viral and become internet sensations, with songs such as Crank That by Soulja Boy. Video sharing is still huge today and it allows artists such as Justin Bieber to broadcast themselves to record labels in order to be signed.