Music Video History

Music videos were created to accompany a piece of music that will last the entire length of the song or longer. The video's are usually visually memorable and are often used as a marketing device.

The earliest example of a music video appeared in 1929 by Bessie Smith and was called St Louis Blues. This was a video of her singing her song around a pub and was the first real type of music video, although this was not planned out in advance to fit to her music, it was literally just her deciding to make a video of her singing the song to a camera.

There is then a jump to the 1950's where the first promo video's appeared, with Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies and Cab Calloway with a live performance to a camera.

During the 50's/60's a very expensive jukebox appeared called a Scopitone Jukebox which originated in France. These jukebox played both the music and a video to go along with the music. Another first was The Beatles with 'A Hard Day's Night' which was a basic visual vocabulary of today's music videos. The Beatles were one of the first to make purpose made videos to illustrate the song such as 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and 'Penny Lane'.

When reaching the 1970's, video editing and creating has become more advanced and of a higher quality. Top of the Pops also appeared on screen to promote and create competition between bands. David Bowie with 'Ashes to Ashes' scored his first number one through Top of the Pops.

The 70's also saw the first music video with the same considerations and preparations that we use today, Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.

In the 1980's, MTV was launched in 81, the first 24 hour music video station, with the iconic choice of 'Video killed the radio star' by The Buggles to be the first video played. The videos during this era became more sophisticated and artists started to add more plot and narrative to the video. Michael Jackson was the first to create a short film concept that cost over $500,000 and was directed by John Landis.

1985 saw the release of VH1 which was meant for an older demographic.

Then in 1986 saw Chart Show channel 4 which contained solely music videos. In this year, the first computer animated video appeared, Dire Straights 'Money for Nothing'.

A new tactic was also born in the 80's, by creating videos that the TV refused to show and caused controversy to help enhance the video and music. Duran Duran's 'Girls on Film' is an example of this.

The cost of creating these video's also increased, Duran Duran spending $4 million to make 'Wild Boys'.

 During 1992 MTV started listing the director with the artist and song credits. Lots of directors started off doing music videos during this time.

In 1995 the most expensive music video was produced, Michael and Janet Jackson's 'Scream' cost $7 million, and remains the most expensive video.

MTV also started to launch channels all around the world, and during 1996 launched MTV2 which played older and more alternative videos.

From 1999-2001 Napster came into play, a sharing video network. Because of this easier way of getting hold of videos, MTV and many other channels mostly abandoned showing music videos.

2005 was the launch of YouTube which had a huge effect on the music industry, with bands such as OKGO finding fame online. The internet has become the primary source for music videos.