History of Music Videos

Music videos has changed and developed overtime during from 1894 to this present day.

In 1894,  Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired electrician George Thomas and other performers to promote their songs "Little Lost Child".  Thomas projected a series of still images using a magic lantern  this was the first step into music videos.

In 1926, a series of musical short films was created, which was known as'visual music'. Bessie Smith was a blues singing during this decade and she appeared in a film called St. Louis Blues (1929), which featured one of her songs. In the 1930's, cartoons featured popular musicians performing their music live on the shows.

 In the mid 1940's Louis Jordan made short footage films for his songs which was merged together in a film called 'Look Out Sister'. This was known to be the ancestor of music videos. The first 'original' music video was in 1956 by Tony Bennett. Tony was filmed in The Sepertine, London recording a song called 'Stranger in Paradise'. This footage of the song was distributed to both the UK and the US, which lead to beliefs that he was the first person to create a music video. In 1959,  JP Richardson was first to create a rock video. In the late 1950's, The Scopitone, which is a visual jukebox made in France lead to many French Artists such as Jacques Brel and Serge Gainsbourg to accompany the songs. This then spreaded to different parts of the world such as Italy, In 1961, a canadian show called Singalong Jubilee began to pre record the music audio, went on location and then taped musician lip syncing. 

In 1964, The Beatles starred in a film called 'A Hard Night's Day' where dialogue was scattered with musicals The music ones then lead to many music videos to be modeled. The Beatles second film 'Help' was also released in a more lavish ways, showing more media techniques in colour. The Beatles recorded several promo clips was was distributed to several countries including the UK. Many other bands during this time decided to follow their footsteps and released promo films, which some lead to live performances of live television shows. 

In 1974, Australia was running two weekly music programmes, known asCountdown and Sound both which featured music videos, some created for the shows. The format the spreaded to different parts of the world. Three years later after the programmes, Video Concert Hall which was an American programme began hosting several music videos. In 1981. MTV was launched (which is a music TV channel within the US), showing several music videos and music 24 hours a day. This channel caused the market to be very popular within the mid 1980's. Many important acts such as Adam and the Ants and Madonna earned a great deal of success due to the their music videos. In 1986, a show called The Chart Show on channel 4 was launched, which caused a dramatic development in music videos. This programme consisted on purely music videos without presenters but more  computer graphics. 

Napster is a website which was ran between 1999 and 2001. This website enabled users to share music files, including music videos. Within the mid 2000's, MTV and many other channels was more in favour of reality television programmes rather than music videos as it appealed more to the audience. In 2005, YouTube was launched making it more easier for people to access music videos. Some artists success began through the viewing of their music online. An example of this is OK Go, which is a known band who became known through YouTube. In 2009, 30 Seconds to Mars released their music videos 'Kings and Queens' on YouTube on the same day on the songs official released. Within a very short space of time, this song reached one hundred million views and it also received 40 million plays on MySpace. Due to the songs success, 30 Seconds to Mars received several nominations at 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. 

Music Videos has now developed dramatically in comparisons to 1930's where magic lanterns was used. There are now channels and websites where music videos can be distributed.