History Of Music Videos

Music Videos began as music played inside cartoons, these cartoons would promote artists by having cartoon asegments of the action split by music artists performing promotional songs during the cartoon.
Music films were exclusive music promotion films, many artists in the 1930s-40s performed in music films including blues singer Bessie Smith who appeared in one of the first.

In the 1950's music films began to become more popular with more recording artists creating music videos. by the 1960's many music films were being produced including 'The Beatles' first feature film 'A Hard Days Night' which was presented as a mocumentary, it mixed together comedy and dialogue with music scenes. The musical scenes laid the way for many other music videos and created a basic template from which many other music videos were based. In 1967 'The Beatles' created two promotional clips for ther singles 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and 'Penny Lane' which took promotional film format to a new level. The Videos used techniques borrowed from underground film including, colour filtering added in post production, and unusual camera angles..

In 1974 television broadcasts of music videos began to appear on television shows including shows directed towards teenage audiences in Australia. Top Of The Pops begain playing music videos although the BBC limited the number of outsourced videos that could be shown. Promotional videos began to make music massivly popular with audiences hoping to watch the videos.

In 1975 Queen ordered a Promo Video for their new single 'Bohemian Rhapsody' to show it on to of the pops. This music video was the first to be filmed and edited on videotape.

The USA Cable Network program Night Flight was one of the first American programs to showcase promo videos as an artform.

In 1981, 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. With this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing.

Two key innovations in the development of the modern music video were the development of relatively inexpensive and easy-to-use video recording and editing equipment, and the development of visual effects created with techniques such as image compositing.

In 1983, one of the most successful, influential and iconic music videos of all time was released: the nearly 14-minute-long video for Michael Jackson's song "Thriller", directed by John Landis. The video set new standards for production, having cost US$500,000 to film.

 

In November 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium. Some directors  got their start around this time; all brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed.

 

The website iFilm, which hosted short videos, including music videos, launched in 1997.

 Napster, a peer-to-peer file sharing service which ran between 1999 and 2001, enabled users to share video files, including those for music videos.

 

 By the mid-2000s, MTV and many of its sister channels had largely abandoned showing music videos in favor of reality television shows, which were more popular with its audiences, and which MTV had itself helped to pioneer with the show The Real World, which premiered in 1992.

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 functionality, use similar technology.

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 functionality, use similar technology. 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


Vevo is a music video website launched by several major music publishers in December 2009. The videos on VEVO are syndicated to YouTube, with Google and VEVO sharing the advertising revenue.
 





 Music Videos are the main form of promotion for artists. Because of this music videos must be readily avalible for audiences and fans to consume with the growth of technology.