The History of Music Videos

Music videos have been transformed and created into a whole new media today, with the aim to entertain and promote their new music. Today it's more about selling the star and being very controversial at times but it never used to be quite the same way. The first appearance of music being partnered with film was in the 1890s with the "little lost child" being released when a story was told in the company on a soft tune following in the scenes.

This followed for the first few years of the 20th century until the 20s/30s when musicals started to appear in the towns of Britain and America. This included the musical films, arrival of 'talkies' and screen songs where introduced to the world. one of the most famous musicals was Grease created in 1978. for the music video of the song "you are the one that I want" they have just took out and placed part of the movie straight in to the music video. This was possibly done to give more familiarity to the music video. Then was the rise of television in the 50s and 60s. This was the prime for bands such as the Beatles and the Elvis. The Beatles used this very well to promote their image and plainly just to let their fans, the people who buy their songs, know what they look like. This was also done through promotional films in the mid sixties which let the world know who The Beatles where and what they looked like. Then one of the key rise to the music videos was the development of MTV - Music Television.

This opened up the gate for a flood of music videos, which is exactly what happened. The launch of MTV saw the video of the hit 'Video killed the Radio Star' which fitted in very well for the occasion. The 80s was a revelation for music videos and they kept coming bigger and better. The huge 'Thriller' by Michael Jackson was one of the first music video that was worth millions and it showed. The amount of effort from routine to make up was a big transformation to what it once was in the early 20th century. Also in the 80s was the release of animation with Sledgehammer was all done with animation won 8 VMAs for the work out into it. 1986 saw the release of the most expensive music video created with Scream by Michael and Janet Jackson. The video was directed by Mark Rominec, the famous film director. This was another reason to how much music videos has expanded. Then the most expensive music video was created by Mark Rominec, for Michael Jackson of course. This was in 1995 with his hit single "Scream" that he created with his sister Janet Jackson which cost Rominec a huge $7 million, showing how much music videos where starting to become an industry for all artists.


This was then when the arrival of YouTube in 2005 became the starting point for every music video to be viewed by millions on the Internet. Almost every chart topping single in the last decade has been viewed by millions and all possible because of YouTube. Today the most viewed video on YouTube is a music video! and that was by PSY with his hit "Gangnam Style" which got a whopping 2,093,306,103 views! This was massive for Music video and now music video has grown in to a huge industry that no one would ignore any more.