What is a music video?
A music video is a short film that accompanies a song. There are many forms of music video: narrative, concept and performance, however many music videos in the 21st century are narrative. Performance videos are often associated with rock whilst many narrative music videos have an element of performance in them also. The purpose of a music video is to promote both the artist and the song to try and increase songs and get them to the top of the charts.
The 1920's
In 1926, with the arrival of "talkies" many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts (produced by Warner Bros.) featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. Animation artist Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball", which is similar to a modern karaoke machine
The 1950's
In his autobiography, Tony Bennett claims to have created "...the first music video" when he was filmed walking along the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London in 1956, with the resulting clip being set to his recording of the song "Stranger in Paradise". The clip was sent to UK and US television stations and aired on shows including Dick Clark's American Bandstand
Elvis Presley
In 1957, the second music video of the story is set in United States, starring Elvis Presley item Jailhouse Rock, the famous theme prison rock, disseminated images in black and white of the time (although the original was engraved colour).
The Beatles
In 1964 The Beatles produced a feature film A Hard Days Night. Which featured footage of them playing some of their songs. Some say that this is the start of the music videos. The next year they made various short films of them playing a song in order to promote their albums
Top of the Pops in the 1970's
The long-running British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s, although the BBC placed strict limits on the number of 'outsourced' videos TOTP could use. Therefore a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week.
MTV and the 1980's
In 1981 MTV was launched as one of the first 24-hours a day music channel. The first music video to be played was “Video Killed the Radio Star.” This channel started the surge of music videos and it became normal for a song to be accompanied with a music video as part of the promotion for the artist. It was also in this time period that directors explored the music video adding story lines and effects.
The most influential music video of the decade was released in 1983, Michael Jackson's Thriller, costing $500 000 to film and was nearly 14 minutes in length. It is said that Michael Jacksons music videos was “instrumental in getting music videos by African American artists played on MTV.”
The Explosion of the 1990's
The 1990’s was the rise of directors. MTV started showing the names of the person who directed the music video shown along with the artist name. This allowed directors such as Mark Romanek and Michael Gondry to start their careers. Mark Romanek directed the most expensive music video of all time Michael and Janet Jackson’s Scream which cost $7 million to produce.
2000's - The Internet
The website iFilm, which hosted short videos, including music videos, launched its service 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.
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. The band OK Go may exemplify this trend, having achieved fame through the videos for two of their songs, "A Million Ways" in 2005 and "Here It Goes Again"
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