History of music videos and how they have changed over time

A music video is a song otherwise known as a short film which is produced for artistic purposes and it is a song and imagery combining together, to therefore make a music video. 

The first song that was considered to be the first music video is Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody' because it was directed and edited for that purpose which was for artistic purposes. many of the music videos that were shot first, were mainly from bands and not individual artists.  

In the late 1950's, a visual jukebox was invented and then short films were then produced by French artists. Then in the early 60's, they actually started to pre-record their audio for the films, they usually went on location and taped a variety of clips with the singer lip 

singing and then edit the audio and video together. The majority of music videos back in them years taped their videos on stage. 

Also, a lot of the videos in the early years were shot in black and white, for example The Beatles 'A hard days night'. It was later on in the 60's that they started to introduce colour into their music videos. 

In 1974, This is when music television really came alive. It started in /Australia where they really wanted to start getting music videos known around the world and show the importance of them. in 1974 DJ Grahma Webb intrtoduded an new show called Sounds Unlimited which was a teen-orientated show, this was where new or known acts could play their music. They then relocated to the UK for British pop bands and this is when they didscovered The Buggles and their music video 'Video killed the radio star' was the first music video played on MTV in 1981. After this music video was aired, this then started a new era of having a music show that was played 24-hours, everyday. 

It was then in the mid 80's where people started to really experiment and explore the form of and style of the genre. so they used more sophisticated effects in their music videos. They even then thought about adding a story or a plot, so their videos had a story to them and they became more interesting. They occasionally didn't even add in the singer to the video, this was rare though in them days because they would usually be seen in the video because their videos were intended to promote the artist, for example, Bruce Springsteen 'Atlantic city' and Duran Duran's music video ' The Chauffeur'. Then Prince's 'Sign o' the times' music video only included the lyrics to the song. 

One of the most successful and iconic music videos that was made in 1983 was Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. This was released as a 14 minute video. It had set new standards in music production along with his earlier videos such as 'Billie Jean' and 'Beat it' , costing over $500.000 to film. They say that Thriller was a 'mini movie that revolutionised music videos' and that it is the most watched video in the world.









Another important development in music history was when  the launch of The Chart Show happened, this was a program that was full of just music videos without any presenters so people could just watch music videos over and over without interruptions.