The first appearances of music videos date back to the 1920's This is when music video “jukeboxes” were fashionable at the time. Essentially, all these were, were jukeboxes which when money was inserted into, played a short music aided video. The majority or near all of these early videos were mainly performance based songs, often just being performed on stage by a band.
It was mainly the Beatles and Elvis that made music videos pick up. The Beatles shot two feature length films, both of which included performances of their songs. The second of the two films included an opening which included many of the later conventions of music videos, such as rhythmic cross cuts, unusual close ups and performance elements. After these successes, The Beatles started recording “filmed inserts” to promote their band, these were basically small, performance based music videos.
After The Beatles success with these “filmed inserts” other bands started also using them for promotion; The Byrds and Bob Dylan for example. The Kinks were one of the first bands to make a plot based promotional video, in which there was a comic book adventure accompanied with their music. This would later become a fairly common aspect of music videos.
Later in the 1970’s, music channels and music video playing channels started appearing on television. Including the British long running show; Top Of The Pops even began playing music videos on their show. After this in 1981 music videos went mainstream, with a huge increase in the importance of using music videos for promotional purpose and an even bigger increase of music videos filmed. The channel, MTV was launched and began a 24 hour a day music on television channel. The music video genre went on to be expanded by increasing emphasis on using them for promotion. For example, the genre began to change and be shown in a non-representational form, where the band members would not appear in their own video, which at the time was peculiar, because the main purpose of having a music video, was to promote band image.
In 1983 a near 14 minute long music video was released. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was a ground breaking music video. It was debated wether it actually was a music video or rather a short film, as it featured conventions of both genres. This is where music videos began to change and become far more then just performance orientated promotional adverts. They began to have narratives, have symbolic elements and even become short films, like this case, for example.
A later change which occurred was the fame given to directors of music videos in the early 2000’s onwards. This was where the directors of the videos were listed with the songs. Another element music videos took from film, actually having a small amount of credits. This meant that now directors could gain fame from the directing of music videos, and become more notorious amongst the music world, as being one of the best directors.
The final change in the music video story, was the invention of the internet. However music videos on the internet did not really pick up till the later 2000’s. This is because the invention of sites such as; Daily Motion, You Tube and Vimeo meant that music videos could easily be posted online for more band promotion. However this also meant that artists lost money for their videos. So websites such as YouTube have specific accounts created that are official accounts of the band, which are the only accounts that can post music videos legally. Any other music videos posted, can be removed if the representatives of the band find out and choose to.
