History of Music Videos

Music videos are short films which integrate a song and imagery which is produced for promotional or artistic purposes only. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as marketing technique intended to promote and increase sales of music recordings. The origins of music videos date back to much further than the 1980’s but rapidly expanded in demand and music channels appeared. 1926 was when many musical short films appeared which were called ‘Talkies’. The vitaphone produced by Warner Bros featured many bands, vocalists and dancers which lead to the first true musical video series being Spooney Melodies in 1930. In 1950 the Scopitone a visual jukebox was invented in France and short films were produced by  French artists such as Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Dutronc to accompany their songs. The monochrome 1966 clip for Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ filmed by D.A. Pennebaker was featured in Pennebaker’s Dylan film documentary ‘Don’t Look Back’. Eschewing any attempted to simulate performance or present a narrative, the clip shows Dylan standing in a city back alley, silently shuffling a series of large A3 cue cards which included key words from the songs narrative.
 

 

 

In 1964 the Beatles starred in their first feature film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ which was shot in black and white as a mock documentary. This was the start of loosely structured musical fantasia which was similar to musical sequences with used a basic template on which countless subsequently music videos were modelled on to be successful in the music industry for films such as the US TV Series ‘The Monkees from 1966 to 1968 which consisted of film segments that were accompanied by various Monkees songs. ‘The Who’ featured in a number of promotional clips from this period bring with ‘Can’ Explain’ in 1965 and ‘Happy Jack’ in 1966 which shows them acting like a gang of thieves.
 

 

 

The world famous British TV show ‘Top of the Pops’ began in the late 1970’s playing music videos but the BBC placed strict limits on the number of ‘outsourced’ music video from outside the UK music industry artists. Therefore, a good popular music video would increase song’s sales massively as viewers hoped to see it again the next week. This make a British Rock music show ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’ produced some pioneering videos during the 1970’s ad early 1980’s such as Frank Zappa’s ‘City of Tiny Lights’. The 1981 was when the US music channel MTV was launched with ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’  and the first 24 hour music video channel. This would led to the new music outlet for material paying in the middle of the 1980’s a central role in popular music marketing. The music videos were starting to increase popular of mainstream artists rapidly with Duran Duran, Adam and the Ants and Madonna. This was owned by mainly MTV and the construction of which appealed of their music videos.

 

 

 

In 1983 the most successful, influential and iconic music videos of all time was released with the 14 minute video by Michael Jackson called ‘Thriller’. The video set new standards from production having cost $500,000; this was instrumental in getting music videos by African American artists played on MTV. Another important development in music videos was he launch of the Chart Show on channel 4 in 1986 which showed a whole programme dedicated to music videos on mainstream television without presenters.

 

 

1999 was the start of peer-to-peer file sharing with the software Napster run between 199 and 2001, enabling users to share video files including those from music videos. 2005 saw the launch of the website YouTube, which made the viewing of online video much faster and easier; Google Videos, Yahoo! Video, Facebook and MySpace’s video functionally which uses similar technology. Websites had a profounder effect on the viewing of music videos with some artists beginning to see success as the result of videos seen mostly online. VEVO is a music website launched by a number of music publishers in December 2009. These videos are syndicated to YouTube, Google and VEVO sharing advertising revenue.