AB - History of Music Video

Early forms of “Music Video” (Pre-1930s) came through the use of short musical films. These films featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. The film was Art-Deco animations and backgrounds with the film of the performer. 

In the 1930s, performers were starring in cartoons where they would perform their song in live-action during the cartoon. 

Throughout the 40s musicians carried on creating short films for their music. These short films were seen as the ancestors of music video.

One of the first breakthrough of a real music video would be ‘The Animals’. Their song ‘House of the Rising Sun’ was a high quality colour performance video of the band lip-syncing. This was in 1964.

In the early 70s, promotional clips grew in importance. Bands were able to show these on TV when they weren’t able to do live performances. The Doors had backgrounds in film making and created two promotional clips. These were for “Break on Through” and “The Unknown Solder”.

The late 70s were the beginning of music television, with shows such as Top of the Pops, dedicated to music performances, were starting to screen music videos.

The start of the 80s was the start of music video mainstream. In 1981, MTV launched with 24/7 running of music. With MTV, music videos would be a key role in the marketing of music. This was evident in 1983 when Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' was released as a 14 minute video. It was the most expensive video at the time, costing $500,000.

SOURCES:- Megavideo; Wikipedia