The History Of The Music Video

The History of the music video

The term “music video” first came into usage in the early 1980’s, when MTV based their format around the medium.

While MTV popularised the medium, prior to that time, these works were described by various terms including “visual music”, “filmed insert” and “promotional clips". 

A brief timeline:

1923- Musical short films were made by Lee De Forest, featuring bands, vocalists and dancers.

1940’s – One song films called “Promotional Clips” were made for the  visual jukebox, Panoram.  These were short films of musical selections made for playing.  These were popular in taverns

and night spots, however they fell out of popularity during WWII.

1950’s - Musical films were also an important precursor to the music video (i.e. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Westside Story – both major influences on Madonna and Michael Jackson’s videos in the 1980’s)

1959 – Disk-jockey/singer J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson coins the phrase “music video”, as the rise of television allows popular music to gain exposure through programs such as “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “American Bandstand”.

1964 – The Beatles took the music video further, and began starring in a series of feature films which interspersed comedic dialogue with exciting and innovative musical sequences.  These films helped cement their international fame and exerted a massive influence on the style and visual vocabulary of the genre.

1966 – Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” deliberately eschewed the attempt at performance or narrative and simply presents Dylan standing in a city back alley silently shuffling a series of large cue cards with lyrics from the song in time to the music. The cue-card device has since been imitated in numerous other music videos.

 1975- Queen had a major hit due to their promo for Bohemian Rhapsody, and Pink Floyd’s confrontational and apocalyptic The Wall helped transform their image.  In 1980, David Bowie scored his first UK number one thanks to his eye catching promo for “Ashes to Ashes”.

1981- MTV debuted

In the U.S., Video Concert Hall predated MTV by three years and was the first nationwide video music programming on American Television.  This was followed by Night Flight, which was one of the first American programs to showcase videos as an artform.  Premiering in June 1981, Night Flight predated MTV’s launch by a mere two months.

1985 – MTV launches VH1: Video Hits One, featuring softer music and meant to cater to an older demographic than MTV.

1986- Peter Gabriel’s song Sledgehammer used special effects and animation techniques developed by the British studio Aardman Animation. This video was renowned for its innovative techniques and went on to win nine MTV Video Music Awards.

    

1992 – 2004- In December 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium. Directors such as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek and Hype Williams all got their start around this time; all brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed. These directors also started to receive much more credit and attention .

2005 - Present- saw the release of the website YouTube, which made the viewing of online video faster and easier; MySpace's video functionality, which uses similar technology, launched in 2007. Such websites had a profound effect on the viewing of music videos; some artists began to see success as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely online. In 2007, the RIAA issued cease-and-desist letters to YouTube users to prevent single users from sharing videos, which are the property of the music labels. After its merger with Google, YouTube assured the RIAA that they would find a way to pay royalties through a bulk agreement with the major record labels. MTV itself now provides streams of artists' music videos, while AOL's recently launched AOL Music features a vast collection of advertising supported streaming videos. The internet has become the primary growth income market for Record Company produced music videos.