History of the Music Video

A music video is a video created to promote the artist; it can range from being the length of the song to becoming a short film. The footage in a music video is created solely for the purpose of being used in the video and it is rare to see a modern music video that uses footage that was not intended for a music video.

The first video recorded performance was by Bessie Smith, it was shown in cinemas between 1929 and 1932, this is technically not a music video as the sound on the video is live and it wasn’t created to promote the artist.

In the 1940’s Disney created Fantasia; these were animated short films which were played with classical music, the music was created for the film rather than the short film being created for the music.

Music promos appeared in 1950’s with the introduction of duke boxes so certain members of the public were able to select popular music tracks. Cab Calloway released a live action video to his song Minnie the Moocher, which was performed in front of a live audience, the footage used was not created solely for a promotional music video it was again like Bessie Smith created for an entertainment purpose.

From the 1950’s to 60’s Scopitone duke boxes were first seen being released in France, the consisted of a number of videos of artists performing their songs, it was very rare to see these duke boxes for the public to use as they were expensive to use.

In 1964 The Beatles created the first music film for their song ‘Hard Day’s Night’ which was the first film of that kind to be created. Later in 1967 they also created videos for ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields’ Strawberry Films was a very psychedelic film with little footage created for the purpose of being used in the music video.  In 1966 Bob Dylan release a video ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ this video was made to be ironic and random, as the words held up on the card are often spelt wrong.

Video recording and editing equipment became cheaper in the 1970’s and in 1975 Queen released a video for Bohemian Rhapsody which is classed as the first proper music video.

In 1981 MTV was launched, this was the first 24 hour music channel, the first song played was ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ by the Buggles, this video showed how the launch of MTV was the end of radio.
 During the 80’s music videos were showing more of a plot and many videos such as Michael Jackson’s Thriller which became a short film by itself.

Top of the Pops was also launched but were very careful as to what they would show on the show. Producers would begin to create a video that would be banned so they could use the controversy to promote their release. Examples of this were Duran Duran’s ‘Girls on Film’ and Fankie Goes to Hollywood with ‘Relax’.

In 1995 Michael Jackson released a video to Scream with his sister, this video cost $7000000 to produce and is the most expensive production ever created.

In 2005 Youtube and iTunes was released,  these releases meant that people could listen to music on the go and what videos whenever they wanted to.