History of music videos

Music videos have a history dating back to the earliest days of sound, early promotional shorts were sometimes set to music and many early Disney films, which were based around the songs. 

1940s- Another early form of music videos was 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 film set bandstand made for playing. These jukeboxes were in restaurants and bars and people paid to watch the clips whilst the music played. 

 

1950s- 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 1950-54. Music centered films, with performance clips in them became popular in the 1950s also. For example Elvis Presley movies with the music Rock around the clock.

1960-70s- Videos began to be produced for music programmes such as Top of The Pops in Britain Hulloballo in the USA. Promotional clips for groups began to be produced, especially The Beatles in the 1960s and other groups in the 1970s. 

1980s- In 1981, the US video channel MTV was launched, beginning an era of 24 hour a day music on television. The first ever song to play on MTV was, The Buggles 'Music Killed the Radio Star'. many of the earliest MTV videos came from Great Britain. The effect of MTV and music videos can bee seen in the British band Duran Duran. This band had great visual appearance and appeal, and made interesting music videos but was not receiving radio airplay's of 1981. Showing of the bands videos on MTV made it immediately popular.  This is a short film of the history of music videos, a music video is a short film integrating a song or imagery, produced mainly for promotional purposes. 

 

Present day- Music videos are central to to marketing popular music. MTV continues to be dominant and now reaches over 320 million TV sets in 90 countries and over five continents. Downloading of videos off the internet is now much more common and this is seen as a threat to to the dominance of the MTV.