The history of music videos

1. THE HISTORY OF MUSIC
VIDEOS
CHLOE BAKER

2. BEFORE MTV
• MTV were the first people to properly air music videos 34 years ago.
• However, there were ways of linking music and videos together before that.
• A Kinetoscope was created in 1895 and it would have a part to look into where a film was
shown, this was then accompanied by sound which in theory was a music video.
• After the creation of the Kinetoscope, Rivoli Theatre was opened in New York in the 1920’s.
This place was a theatre that put music and videos together.
• The 1940’s bought JukeBoxes which played music and showed dances at the same time.
• The Beatles promoted their records in the 1960’s using promo films. Other Rock Bands caught
onto this and started to release prom films themselves which were a song long

3. MTV
• MTV came about in 1981.
• The first video they showed to the public was The Buggles ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’
• Music videos were first aired to raise awareness of the songs and to add value to the songs.
• They weren’t produced properly and were very low budget.
• When they became more important and iconic, big acts like Michael Jackson and Madonna would start
to invest more, for example Michael Jackson Thriller was so massive, there was a huge countdown for
the release of the video on MTV. The video was 13 minutes long so was more like a short movie.
• MTV has since grown and become part of a culture, they don't only show music videos anymore, they
have award shows, TV shows and radio.

4. TOP OF THE POPS
• Top of the Pops is a British TV show. It came about in the 1960’s.
• The show was a weekly performance from the artists who were hot at the time.
• When artists became more world wide and couldn’t always be there to perform, TOTP would
show music videos so they could still promote the artists songs.

5. YOUTUBE
• Youtube was launched in 2005.
• This made the sharing of music videos a lot easier as you could share them across social media
platforms.
• It was a cheap and easy was to put your music video out into the world.
• There are now channels to promote artists music videos for example VEVO who are a huge YouTube
company.
• Music videos do extremely well, for example PSY Gangnam style has over one billion view on YouTube,
because the video has a silly dance. Psy now has the most viewed music video in the world on YouTube.