History of Music Videos

A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music or a song. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. However this all started a long time ago with a very different motive when a man named Lee De Forest made the first music video. However at the time the music was played alongside animated films, and the music was just an orchestra in the background. Between the 1930's to the 1950's Max Fleischer was a key figure in America, more specifically Hollywood, as he helped to establish the whole concept of the music videos at that time.

The next major breakthrough was in 1964, when the group Animals released their music video 'House of the Rising Sun'. Looking back on it you can tell the whole set design was rather cheap, as everything looked flimsy to be honest. However obviously for that time it must have been seen differently, and that was essentially the starting point for music videos in my opinion. Also, in the same year Beatles released their first feature film (A Hard Day's Night) and this went on to inspire many other artists as it was something original and new at the time. Two years later The Beatles stopped touring and filmed two sets of colour promotional clips. This was quite a big thing at the time, and the band members themselves said that it was just to concentrate on writing and recording.
The next big thing in the history of music videos was when Bob Dylan made a music video, but instead of miming to the recording, he illustrated the lyrics by throwing cue cards containing key words from the song on the ground (Don't Look Back). At this time song films were called 'film inserts', and they were starting to mean something to audiences. In the same year (1966), 'Dead End Street' was released, and it was the first music video with an actual plot. However music videos were still just being used to promote the sales of the music recordings, and were not being sold separately like they are now. This was proven when David Bowie distributed Mick Rock's music for free for promotion.
A few years later Top of the Pops started playing music, and this was in the late 1970's. To rival this whole concept, 24-hour-a-day channel called 'MTV' was launched (1981).