History of Music Videos- Timeline 1920's to present day

1923 – Musical short films were made by Lee De Forest, featuring bands, vocalists and dancers.

1929 – Dziga Vertov made the 40 minute Man With the Movie Camera, an experiment filming real events, paired with a musical score.

1930’s – Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along by “following the bouncing ball”.

Early animated films by Walt Disney were built around music, and the Warner Bros. Cartoons were also fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Bros. Musical films.

Mid-1940’s: Musician Louis Jordan made short films for his songs, some of which were spliced together into a feature film called Lookout Sister.  Some historians claim these films are the ancestors of the music video.

1940’s – One song films called “Promotional Clips” were made for the  visual jukebox, Panoram.  These were short films of musical selections made for playing.  These were popular in taverns and night spots, but fell out of popularity during WWII.

1950’s - Musical films were also an important precursor to the music video(i.e. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,

Westside Story – both major influences on Madonna and Michael Jackson’s videos in the 1980’s)

Late 1950’s – A new format of filming live performances, such as Stravinsky’s orchestra or Tony Bennett singing becomes popular.

1959 – Disk-jockey/singer J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson coins the phrase “music video”, as the rise of television allows popular music to gain exposure through programs such as “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “American Bandstand”.

1950’s - The Scopitone, a visual jukebox was invented in France and short films were produced by many French artists to accompany their songs.  It quickly spread to other countries and similar machines such as the Cinebox in Italy and the the Colour-Sonic in the USA were patented.

Many artists began pre-recording music and then filming on location to create a visual accompaniment.  These would feature the artists lip-synching, and most music numbers were taped in a studio set, with the location videos added and edited together later.

1960’s – One of the earliest performance clips in 1960’s pop was the “promo film” made by The Animals for their breakthrough hit House of the Rising Sun (1964).

This high-quality colour clip was filmed in a studio on a specially built set and features the group lip-synching and walking around the set in a series of choreographed moves.

The video depicted the group through an edited sequence of tracking shots, close ups and long shots, and was a new form of the music video medium.

 <- the earliest music video

1964 – The Beatles took the music video further, and began starring in a series of feature films which interspersed comedic dialogue with exciting and innovative musical sequences.  These films helped cement their international fame and exerted a massive influence on the style and visual vocabulary of the genre.

In particular, Help! (1965) is considered one of the prime archetypes of the modern performance style music videos.

It employs rhythmic cross-cutting, contrasting long shots and close ups and usual shots and camera angles.

1965 – The Beatles began making promo clips, known as “filmed inserts” which were distributed and broadcasted in other countries (primarily the USA) so they could promote their records without having to make in-person performances.  Soon after, other British artists began to follow suit and the popularity led to the pop music phenomenon known as the “British Invasion”.

Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, The Byrds, The Kinks, The Who, etc.

1966 – Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” deliberately eschewed the attempt at performance or narrative and simply presents Dylan standing in a city back alley silently shuffling a series of large cue cards with lyrics from the song in time to the music. The cue-card device has since been imitated in numerous other music videos.

The promotional clip trend continued to grow in importance and became a popular medium for television.  Over the next two decades, artists and bands alike would rely on this medium as a way to showcase their music internationally.

These clips utilized many filmic elements, such as cross cutting, reverse film, slow motion, a range of unusual camera angles and movement, dramatic lighting, colour filtering and edited interweaving of location and set scenes. 

They were also influenced by several genres, including impressionism, avant-garde, nouvelle vague, and underground, independent films.  

1970’s – Several TV shows were significant in developing and popularizing the music video genre.

In the UK, the long-running British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970’s.

In 1975 Queen had a major hit due to their promo for Bohemian Rhapsody, and Pink Floyd’s confrontational and apocalyptic The Wall helped transform their image.  In 1980, David Bowie scored his first UK number one thanks to his eye catching promo for “Ashes to Ashes”.

In the U.S., Video Concert Hall predated MTV by three years and was the first nationwide video music programming on American Television.  This was followed by Night Flight, which was one of the first American programs to showcase videos as an artform.  Premiering in June 1981, Night Flight predated MTV’s launch by a mere two months

1980's-The 1980’s was an important decade in music. MTV debuted in 1981 and began the era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. Its first music video was Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles

 With this new outlet for material, the music video would grow to play a major role in popular music making by the mid-1980’s.

 

Many important acts of this period owe a great deal of their success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of their videos.

Some historians and academics compare music videos to the silent film, in that it allows artists to deliberately construct an image of themselves (i.e. Madonna), and in many ways echoes the image of the stars of the silent era, such as Greta Garbo.

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.

The advent of high-quality colour videotape recorders and portable video cameras coincided with the DIY ethos of the New Wave era, enabling many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, in comparison to the relatively high costs of using film. 

In this period directors and artists 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 was not shown. Because music videos are mainly intended to promote the artist, such videos are comparatively rare; two early 1980s examples are Bruce Springsteen’s Atlantic City, directed by Arnold Levine, and David Mallet's video for David Bowie and Queen's "Under Pressure".

In 1986 Peter Gabriel’s song Sledgehammer used special effects and animation techniques developed by the British studio Aardman Animation.

This video was renowned for its innovative techniques and went on to win nine MTV Video Music Awards.

1984 – Canada launches MuchMusic

1985 – MTV launches VH1: Video Hits One, featuring softer music and meant to cater to an older demographic than MTV.

1987 – MTV Europe is launched.

1991 – MTV Asia is launched.

1988 – Yo! MTV Raps debuts and helps bring hip hop and rap music to the masses.

1992-2004: Rise of the Directors

In December 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium. Directors such as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek and Hype Williams all got their start around this time; all brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed.

Some of these directors, including, Gondry, Jonze and F. Gary Gray, went on to direct feature films. This continued a trend that had begun earlier with directors such as Lasse Hallstrom and David Fincher.

2005-Present

The website iFilm, which hosted short videos, including music videos, launched in 1997. Napster, a 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 favour 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 release of the website YouTube, which made the viewing of online video faster and easier; MySpace's video functionality, which uses similar technology, launched in 2007.

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.

In 2007, the RIAA issued cease-and-desist letters to YouTube users to prevent single users from sharing videos, which are the property of the music labels. After its merger with Google, YouTube assured the RIAA that they would find a way to pay royalties through a bulk agreement with the major record labels.

MTV itself now provides streams of artists' music videos, while AOL's recently launched AOL Music features a vast collection of advertising supported streaming videos. The internet has become the primary growth income market for Record Company produced music videos.