History:
Music Videos
1900 - The Gramophone
The gramophone, invented by Thomas Edison and changing the way of music videos as we know it. The gramophone allowed people to enjoy their favourite artists in the comfort of their own homes, whilst artists also began to make a new profit coming from vinyl sales.
1920 - Oskar Fischinger
Oskar Fischinger was a German-American abstract animator, film maker and painter. He created the abstract musical animation decades before computer graphics and music videos appeared.
1927- The Jazz Singer
The Jazz Singer was the first feature length motion picture with sound. This caused a rise in the productions of 'Talkies' causing a downfall in silent movies. The Jazz Singer was produced by the Warner Bros who used vitaphone sound on a disc system to produce the film.
1940 - Soundies & Panoram
The creation of ‘soundies’ came around. Soundies were short 3 minute films used to showcase artists. They are usually filmed on a 16mm camera and each contained a song, dance, band or orchestral number. They were normally released and played on a panorama, which is similar to a coin operated jukebox. They were often found in bars, clubs and restaurants.
1957 - Jailhouse Rock
The king of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley released a video to his song ‘Jailhouse Rock’ which was a part of the film ‘Jailhouse Rock’. It was considered to be one of the first music videos released and was classed as one of the most memorable introductions into Rock and Roll. In 2004 it was selected for ‘preservation’ due to it significant influence on modern media.
1975 - Bohemian Rhapsody//Queen
Bohemian Rhapsody was a critical success, it stayed at number one for nine weeks and sold over a million copies by January 1976. The music video for the song was considered ground breaking due to it being released seven years before the beginning of MTV.
1982 - The Wall//Pink Floyd
The Wall by Pink Floyd is a musical film that was directed by Alan Parker. It is a feature length narrative music video for Pink Floyd’s album ‘The Wall’. It contains animated features by the artist Gerald Scarfe and arguable has elements of being a conceptual music video due to the symbolic imagery through out.
1962 - Summer Holiday
In 1962, Summer Holiday was released and was one of the first music videos to have synchronized dance, song and sound. It was a technicolour musical that starred Cliff Richard and managed to reach number one in the UK. The choreographer for the film later became the film’s director. The film was also voted the 99th greatest family film in a Channel 4 poll and is still regularly shown.
1976- Video Killed The Radio Star//The Buggles
The music video for Video Killed the Radio Star had a budget of $50,000 and was filmed and edited over the course of three days. It was released on Top of the Pops to promote the single but it has been considered that the video was the debut of MTV in 1981 and in 2000 it became the millionth video to be aired on MTV.
1995 - The Most Expensive Video
The popularity increase in music videos meant that artist began to spend more money on production as they wanted to produce music videos that the audience would remember and love. Michael and Janet Jackson have claimed the record for the most expensive music video – reaching a massive $7,000,000, Scream became the most expensive music video.
1988/1991 - The Rise of Genres
During this time the development of music channels on TV became much more diverse. This allowed music to have a lot more diversity due to the appearance of genre specific channels. This allow genres to have more exposure and to also showcase a wider spectrum of artists to different audiences.
2005 - The Modern Age: The Internet
The launch of YouTube in 2005 created a whole new platform for discovered and undiscovered artists. Allowing music videos to be more accessible than ever. The most viewed music video of all time is PSY’s Gangnam Style (강남스타일). Hitting a whopping 2,585,209,040 views.