The History Of Music Videos

A music video is a short 3-4 minute long video clip that accompanies a song, usually produced for promotional purposes, they provide a visual representation of the artist and their music for the audience. Music videos are equally important to the artist as they are to the music industry; artists are allowed to express their lyrics in any form in which they feel necessary. Music videos can be incredibly powerful with the right music video, an unknown artist can attract a more mainstream audience, resulting in a growth of popularity and ultimately making them earn more money. 


The initial idea of music videos were developed over a period of time originally starting in the 1980's; first of all the 'illustrated song' was introduced by sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe stern who projected a series of still images on screen simultaneously to a live performance and their song "The little lost child." These were then accompanied by the arrival of 'talkies', 'soundies' and 'shorts' between 1926-1959. 
Musical films were another important factor to the development of music videos and still influenced a few well-known music videos which have imitated the typical style of classic Hollywood musicals from 1930s-1950s. One of the best-known examples is Madonna's 1985 video for "Material Girl" which was closely modelled on Jack Cole's staging of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" from the hit film ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’. Several of Michael Jackson's videos show an evident influence of the dance sequences in classic Hollywood musicals, including "Thriller" as well as "Bad" which was heavily influenced by the dance "fights" in the film West Side Story; all highly successful and iconic music videos. 

By the 1980’s, the U.S video channel MTV launched, airing "video killed the radio star" and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television; in this period, directors and the acts began to explore and expand the form and style of the genre, using more sophisticated effects in their videos, mixing film and video, and adding a storyline or plot to the music video. Occasionally videos were made in a non-representational form in which the musical artist were not shown. Because music videos are mainly intended to promote the artist, such videos are comparatively rare. MTV gradually became more and more popular from here on as more musical videos were being produced and then broadcasted on this channel. 

Then in 1985, MTV then launched the channel VH1, featuring softer music, and meant to cater to an older demographic than MTV. MTV Europe was launched in 1987 followed by MTV Asia in 1991. Another important development in music videos was the launch of The Chart Show on the UK's Channel 4 in 1986; this was a program which consisted entirely of music videos without any presenters. 

There are now a huge range of different music channel showing hundreds of mus videos a day, music videos popularity have had a continuous growth over the past few decades and it is expected they will continue to do so.