1. Music Video History and Research
A music video is a short film of which integrates a song and imagery and is often produced for
promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing
device intended to promote the sale of music recordings and the artists/band popularity.
1926 = many musical short films were produced and they featured many bands, vocalists
and dancers. Spooney Melodies in 1930 was the first true musical video series. They were
typically six minutes long and featured Art Deco-style animations and backgrounds
combined with film of the performer singing.
Musical films were another important stage to music videos and several well-known music videos
have imitated the style of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s to the 1950s for example
Madonna's 1985 video for "Material Girl" which was modeled on the staging of "Diamonds Are A
Girl's Best Friend" from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
1950s = the ‘Scopitone’ a visual jukebox was invented in France and short films were produced by
many French artists to accompany their songs which lead to the jukebox’s being made worldwide
and this was another form of getting music videos recognized by the public/audiences.
One of the earliest Videos of a Top 40 hit was Jan & Dean's "Surf City" produced in 1963 and the
single release reached Number One nationally in July 1963.
Promotional Clips
The monochrome 1966 clip for Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was featured in Dylans
film documentary don’t Look Back. The clip shows Dylan standing in a city back alley, silently
shuffling a series of large cue cards. Many "song films “often referred to as "filmed inserts" at that
time were produced by UK artists so they could be screened on TV when the bands were not
available to appear live.

2. The beginning of Music Television in the UK
The long-running British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s BUT
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. In 1980,
David Bowie scored his first UK number one in nearly a decade thanks to director David Mallet's eye
catching promo for "Ashes to Ashes".
1981= MTV launched airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and the beginning of an era of 24-hour-a-
day music on television. By the mid-1980sthe music video grew to play a central role in popular
music marketing. Many important acts of this period such as Duran Duran and Madonna owed a
great deal of their success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of their videos.
Two key innovations in the development of the modern music video were the development of
relatively inexpensive and easy-to-use video recording and editing equipment and the development
of visual effects created with techniques such as image compositing
2005 – Present
The website iFilm which hosted short videos including music videos launched in 1997. Napster a
peer-to-peer file sharing service 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. 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.
2010= Lady Gaga's music video "Bad Romance" made headlines by becoming the most-viewed video
on YouTube and whole internet of all time with 130 million views, it had over 430 million views by
later 2011.
MTV itself now provides streams of artists music videos while AOL's recently launched AOL Music
featuring a vast collection of advertising supported streaming videos. The Internet has become the
primary growth income market for record company-produced music videos.
At its launch Apple's iTunes Store provided a section of free music videos in high quality compression
to be watched via the iTunes application. More recently the iTunes Store has begun selling music
videos for use on Apple's iPod with video playback capability.