Research- History of music videos

A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music/ song. This is to keep the audience entertained and portray the genre the audience through micro elements conveyed through the music video. The term “music video” first came into popular usage in the early 1980’s. Before this they were known as many terms such as “filmed insert”, film clip” and “promotional (promo) film”. Although in the Chinese entertainment, music videos were known as MTV’s because this network were responsible for bringing music videos to popularity in that country. Around the 1920’s was when music videos first started. During these times, music videos were only available at certain times on certain channels, but today you can watch videos anytime on a range of mediums such as TV, iPod and internet. Music videos are used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Music videos use or mix a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation, live action filming, documentaries and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. From this research we have decided to make sure our music video is available on the internet in websites such as YouTube and MySpace. We will also make sure it can be seen on televisions.

(1984) “The Little Lost Child” – This was considered the first music video. Edward Marks used still images and music together to create a music video. The narrative is a police man finding a lost child in the streets and takes the child back home to find out that the mother is his estranged wife. This music video helped pave the way to the conventional “only sound” style to create a new style of music.  This made music more appealing as the audience could see the music’s narrative which emphasises the experience of music.

Panoram was invented in the 1940’s and was a trademark of the first visual duke box. It was a large box similar to a juke box but with a large screen on it that played soundie’s that were 3minute black and white music videos. Panoram’s were placed in bars and cafes to entertain their audiences a step further than juke boxes by adding visuals to the songs. The themes of these songs were usually from Hollywood films of that era with a dance sequence. Panoram now allowed music to now tell stories and emphasize the emotion of the song much more effectively due to the visual effect.



Fantasia was an animated film in 1940 played with classical music throughout with the film being made Walt Disney and music being conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The classical music was conveyed through the images as the characters as didn’t speak but danced making the film seem like a kind of animate theatre film. This is still famous and considered an animated classic as there were a number of re-releases and restored quality. During the time it was first released, it was very popular by the audience because this was a unique animated music video and was the first of its time which intrigued audience.

Scopitones was an improved version of a panoram in the 1960’s. It had colour and an upgraded system. The conventions of music videos changed from the era of the panoram; ‘the swinging sixties’ involved sex, drugs and voyeurism.

Top of the Pops can about in 1964 and was a British music chart television programme shown on BBC once a week. This was the first programme that was dedicated to music and allowed the public to discover new music. This programme shows new artists performing on stage. This show was successful and created the basic of the way we view music videos on television today.








Bohemain Rhapsody was a song performed by a band called Queen in 1975. This is known as a classic song because it was unique for its time and broke the conventional generic style of music videos as it had no chorus, lasted 5minutes and 6 different song style sections which are; intro, ballad, guitar solo, opera, hard rock and outro plus. This song was in the rock genre but all of these parts that made up the song were unconventional to the rock genre. However it seemed to work as it was very popular at the time and sold worldwide.

MTV is an American network set up in 1981 to play all of the latest music from music artists, since then they have diversified into many channels that show television shows. This development made a major impact on the audiences as they could now view music at all times. MTV shows all music genres to attract different types of audiences.

YouTube is a website that the public can create an account on to upload videos and also watch videos. This social network site as become successful over the years and has become the host for music companies for them to place their artist’s music video so they can gain publicity and attention; the audience could view music videos on demand. By this time music video have became available at all times and they have many different conventions for each genre that help to convey their genre to their audience.