MUSIC VIDEOS History & Evolution

WHAT ARE MUSIC VIDEOS ?

A music video (also video clip, promo ) is a short film meant to present a visual representation of a popular music song. Music videos were primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings.

A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. A Music Video is a part of the marketing strategy, a marketing tool promoting an artist, a single or an album.

HISTORY Music video has a history dating back to the earliest days of film. Early promotional shorts were sometimes set to music and many early Disney films were based around songs from upcoming films.

SILENT MUSICALS – 20s The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself. Showings of silent films almost always featured live music, starting with the pianist at the first public projection of movies.

TALKIES– 1926 Synchronized soundwas only made practical in the late 1920s with the perfection of the Audion amplifier tube and the introduction of the Vitaphone system. After the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927, "talkies" became more and more commonplace. Vitaphone shorts (produced by Warner Bros.) featured many bands, vocalists and dancers.

EARLY 30s Early 1930s cartoons featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the cartoons.

SOUNDIES Another early form of music video were one-song films called Soundies made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox . Thousands of Soundies were made, mostly of jazz musicians. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand, made for playing.

50s In the late 1950s the Scopitone, a visual jukebox, was invented in France and short films were produced by many French artists, such as Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy, Jacques Brel, and Jacques Dutronc to accompany their songs.

FIRST TV SHORT MUSIC CLIPS The very first short musical films in the USA made specifically for television were the Snader Telescriptions More than 1000 short musical presentations were filmed for use as television filler between 1950 and 1954.

MUSICALS IN FILMS Music centred films, with performance clips in them became popular in the 1950s also eg Elvis Presley movies eg Rock around the Clock

VIDEOS FOR MUSIC PROGRAMMES Videos began to be produced for music programmes such as Top of The Pops in Britain and Hullabaloo in the USA Promotional clips for groups began to be produced , especially the Beatles in the 1960s and then other groups in the 1970s

MUSIC TELEVISION In 1981 , the U.S. video channel, MTV, was launched, beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. The first video ever played was The Buggles “Music Killed the Radio Star”

RISE OF THE DIRECTORS Since 1992, MTV started listing directors with the artists and song credits. Reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium.

DIGITAL ERA The website iFilm, which hosted short videos, including music videos, launched in 1997. In 2005, YouTube was launched, which made the viewing of online video much faster and accessible