History of Music Videos

A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a song or piece of music. Modern videos are primarily are primarily used as a marketing device intended to promote the sales of music recordings.

Bessie Smith-St. Louis blues

This is one of the earliest examples of music videos that we are familiar with today. It was shown in theatres in 1932, however we are able to access music videos almost anywhere now and shows how much technology has changed.

The earliest music videos were filmed in the mid 1950's, however before then in the 1920's, films by animators such as Oscar Fishcinger, were accompanied by musical scores labelled 'visual music'. In 1940, Walt Disney released 'Fantasia', an animated film based around famous pieces of classical music.

The key innovation in the development of the modern music video was, of course, video recording and editing processes, along with the development of a number of related effects such as chroma-key . The advent of high-quality colour videotape recorders and portable video cameras coincided with the DIY ethos of the New Wave era and this enabled many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, in comparison to the relatively high costs of using film. However, as the genre developed music video directors increasingly turned to 35mm film as the preferred medium, while others mixed film and video. By the mid-1980s releasing a music video to accompany a new single had become standard, and acts like The Jackson's sought to gain a commercial edge by creating lavish music videos with million dollar budgets.

Michael Jackson-thriller

This video was the pioneer of the 'Storyline' video which has a plot, almost like a 'mini' movie. It contains sophisticated visuals and it took the music industry to another level. Now music videos were really being seen as promotion and made into high-budget productions.


Music videos now hold stories and put the technological advances to good use by highly creative videos. But some artists want the audience to focus on the music rather than the video so has a very simple storyline.