History of Medium

History of Medium

History of Music Video

Music Videos have drastically changed since they came about in 1895. Strictly speaking the first music video wasn’t actually a music video, it was a film with music in the background.  This film was actually made for the Kinetophone. The Kinetophone could be considered a very old piece of technology, yet the closest to our modern day technology in regards to film making. This piece of technology was actually made by Thomas Edison’s lab and it basically worked by showing moving pictures, and was also connected to a Phonograph.



In the early twentieth century, things changed drastically for the music video industry. In 1894 a publicity stunt was introduced. This involved marketing sheet music, the illustrated song actually consisted of images which were painted in color and then from this were then projected from glass slides (very much like a projector in todays day and age)  you would even sometimes see silent moving images clips, used too. This would often be shown to an audience, while singers and pianists would sing and play music along with the the images. 

In Rivoli Theatre of New York City, In April 1923, we were first introduced to motion pictures with "on-film-sound" which was quite a breakthrough. A couple of years later in 1927 the first full length "film" was premiered, using the newly found technology allowing music and sound to be put with the images. A lot of the first "sound on film" productions actually starred opera singers, popular musicians, bands etc. These were hereby known as musical shorts, and these clips could be seen just before the feature films, in the 1940's. Again during the 1950's these musical shorts were used once more between the screenings of television movies, much like advertisements between films you see on television today.


When the animated series which was called "Song-car Tunes", which has sound-on-film, debuted, the two Fleischer brothers, Max and David actually released this cartoon which in a nutshell featured a bouncing ball which simply hopped along the lyrics, therefore encouraging the the theatre audiences to sing along. This "Bouncing ball" idea became more and more popular as the years went on and appeared in many future children's programmes.



When it got to the 1940's, soundies which were three minute films which presented dance/music performances were shown on jukeboxes all across the United States and were normally found in places like restaurants and bars. All sorts of artists featured on these jukeboxes ranging from comedians, musicians, jazz singers etc, and as well this in France, in the 1950's a form of visual Jukebox also had some success in europe/united states and also presented similiar things to the bog-standard "jukebox".



In about 1959, this was when film clips with music in the background first gained the name "Music Video", because people such as Singer/songwriter Jiles Perry Richardson were a couple of the first people known to refer to such a medium as a "Music Video", who used this term in an interview with a british magazine. The singer from Chantilly Lace was also known to be involved with the earliest known rock videos in 1958.

By the 1960's The beatles began to really put together music and movies, and make it look very effective at the same time, and used this to express themselves as artists. The beatles also starred in feature films, which were full length such as "A Hard Days Night" among many others, and they also starred in many short promotional clips, which were considered narrative or abstract, these were then broadcast all over. By 1960's/1970's many other rock and roll bands followed their lead and began releasing promo videos.







In 1974, countries such as as Australia began with programmes like "Countdown" and "Sounds" these were both considered teen programmes which primarily shown music videos, as the years went on they began to get more and more of a "following". By 1978 which was actually just three years before MTV was launched, "Video Concert Hall" began which would offer audiences many many hours of music videos, on US television.

This was generally where and how the Music video started, and from here it evolved and became what it is today.