Music Video Research: History

To get a really good feel for what I was doing, I decided to research music videos themselves. I thought I would look at their history and any interesting modern video trivia.

HISTORY

The first recorded use of images accompanying music was in 1894 during the period of sheet music. Edward B. Mansen and Joe Stern promoted their song The Little Lost Child with a series of images. This was the birth of the idea of "illustrated song" which later became music videos.

Many short films were made in 1926 with the introduction of movies and talkies. Warner Brothers produced many of the earliest works, featuring many bands and vocalists. The first series was entitled Spooney Melodies and each was generally around 6 minutes in length.

Slip forward to the mid-1940s and musician Louis Jordan started making short films for his music. Some of them were put together to make the feature film "Lookout Sister" and became the ancestors of modern music videos.

Another jump forward to 1974 sees the Australian TV Show "Countdown" show music and video clips to promote the acts that appeared on the show. The idea became very popular and the music industry began to take notice. They noticed the marketing potential of music clips, and the wheels were set in motion. One of the earliest notable performances was by AC/DC for their song "It's A Long Way to the Top".

The idea of MTV (Music Television) was in production, but it was beaten to the punch by American TV show "Video Concert Hall", which premiered in June 1981. However, just a few months after this, MTV was born and the age of 24-Hour music videos was born. MTV opened with a showing of the classic song "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.

This new format was a boon for the biggest stars to not only market themselves, but also to create their image. Artists like Madonna were the pioneers and she herself was part of one of the earliest big stories involving music videos. The video to "Like A Prayer" was released in 1989 and was criticized for it's supposed corrupting of Catholic Religious Iconography. The other big story of the time was the 14-minute release of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video in 1984, still one of the most recognizable videos today.

By the mid-1980s the genre was expanding to include variety and global audiences. In 1985, MTV launched a sister channel, VH1 (Video Hits 1) that featured music aimed at an older audience. MTV was aimed at a younger audience, so by releasing VH1 the market was expanded massively. MTV was made available in Europe in 1985 and in Asia in 1991.

As time went on, more music genres were incorporating this new marketing technique and establishing a firm base in the market itself. In 1988 Yo! MTV Raps was launched, bringing rap and hip-hop music to a nationwide audience. It also helped to launch some of the biggest names in rap to a much wider market.

Time continued to allow a more global audience. The mid-1990s were almost entirely devoted to expanding the world music market. Some of the Channels launched included: MTV Latin America in 1993, MTV India in 1996 and MTV Mandarin in 1997.

However, as even more time passed, the demand was for the channels to produce more than just music videos to keep hold of it's audiences. By the mid-2000s the channels had begun to replace portions of it's Music Video programming with Reality TV produced specifically for them.

While Music Videos are still an important part of the Music Industry, it has seen a slight decline in recent years. This has been for a number of reasons including a decline in popularity and global economic conditions.