Music videos - a brief history

Music Video's History!

• A music video (also video clip, promo) is a short film meant to present a visual representation of a popular music song. Music videos are a way of promoting and marketing a group or song
• Music videos have a history dating back to the earliest days of sound film. Early promotional shorts were sometimes set to music and many early Disney films were based around songs from upcoming films.
• Another early form of music videos were one-song films called Soundies made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox. Thousands of Soundies were made, mostly of Jazz musicians
• Soundies were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand, made for playing
• These jukeboxes were in restaurants and bars and people played to watch the clip while the music played
• The very first short musical films in the USA mad specifically for television were the Snader Telescriptions. More than 1000 short musical presentations were filmed for use as television filler between 1950 and 1954
• Music centred films, with performance clips in them became popular in the 1950s also e.g. Elvis Presley - Rock  around the Clock
• 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
• In 1981, the US video channel MTV was launched, beginning and era of 24-hour-a-day music on television
• The first video ever played was The Buggles ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’
• Many of the earliest MTV videos came from Great Britain. The effect of MTV and music videos can be seen in the British band Duran Duran. This band had great visual appeal and made interesting videos but was not receiving video airplay as of 1981. Showing of the band’s videos on MTV made it immediately popular.
• The careers of many artists including Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince, Peter Gabriel and U2 as well as Duran Duran were promoted by MTV
• Music videos are central to the marketing of popular music. Mtv continues to be dominant and now reaches more than 320 million TV sets in 90 countries, over 5 continents
• Downloading of videos off the internet is now common and this is seen as a threat to the dominance of MTV
• Marketing of music is all important in popular music and new releases need a music video and TV time as well as music time