History Of Music Videos

I was speaking to my Mum last night and she said, why don't you do some research into the history of music videos and I have conducted some. She said that she could remember when 'Thriller' was aired on TV and they stayed up until midnight, which was when it was shown on TV and everyone did. She also said 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen was extremely influential.

Music video's have mainly evolved from the 1894, starting with an "Illustrated Song" of The Little Lost Child. Images were projected onto a screen and made up the first illustrated song, marking the start of music videos.

They then started to develop and in the 1930's and become musical films, where songs were interwoven into a short film and then they started to make short films which featured bands, vocalists and dancers.

In 1956, the rise of the TV started to take over and music kind of sided with that and it became the rise of TV and music. This began to expose new talent to the outside world.

In 1965: The Beatles started to make promotional films to promote their music, so this tied in the with that being their music videos and they were a large band at the time, making others aware of so called 'music videos'.

1981: MTV was launched, showing new music to the world and also music videos. It played a central role of music marketing in the 80's.

1983: Michael Jackson's Thriller was aired on TV. This was known as the first televised music video and it was shown at midnight, where the whole nation stayed up to watch it being shown. This was classed as the "most successful and influential video of all time". It was nominated for 6 MTV video music awards in 1984. This video could've also have been classed as a short film, as it lasted 13 minutes long.

1992: Directors of the music videos started to receive credit for their work and were credited after the video had been shown.

1995: The Jacksons 'Scream' was classed "the most expensive music video of all time", costing a whopping £7 million to make.

2005: YouTube was launched, showing hunders of videos worldwide, including music videos.

2005: iTunes was launched, making both music and music videos available for purchase.

2010: 34 billion music videos were viewed online with 183 million viewers.

As music videos have developed over time, so has the media, enabling more marketing to prevail for artists. As YouTube was created, people can now do covers of artists work, promoting them even further, however now music videos aren't a big deal anymore, unlike Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' which caused massive popular demand from the public as they weren't used to such thing, especially as it was 13 minutes long. Now music videos are a lot more modern and they vary considerably, with some holding a strong storyline, yet others just showing the band performing. A lot of them as well have special effects embedded within them which has developed over time and become a natural thing in the 21st century.

So, I have learnt that music videos have evolved from illustrated songs, to short films and are now the norm to watch.