Music videos first emerged in the 1950s with promotional videos for songs. In the 1960s, The Beatles starred in two feature films, A Hard Day's Night and Help!, which helped establish the music video genre. The 1970s saw the debut of music television programs like Countdown and Sounds, which helped promote new artists. The 1980s was the era of MTV, launching in 1981 and making music videos mainstream. Artists like Duran Duran and Madonna benefited from high production music videos. The 1990s saw directors become more prominent in music videos. Since 2005, YouTube has made sharing and viewing music videos much more accessible globally.

1. HISTORY OF MUSIC
VIDEOS
Harvey Coltman

2. EARLY STAGES
The first real music video is said to have been created by Tony
Bennett in 1956 where he was filmed walking down past the
Serpentine in Hyde Park, London. The recording was then put over his
song ‘Stranger in paradise’. With the oldest example of a promotional
music video being ‘Lets get to the apartment’ directed by Ladislav
Rychman in 1958.

3. THE 1960’S
The Beatles were starred in their first feature film in 1964 called A
Hard Days Night which was directed by Richard Lester and shot in
black and white. Help! Was the Beatles second feature in 1965 being a
much more extravagant film as it was filmed in colour. Making it one
of the first known colour music videos and one which has inspired
many more to this day.

4. 1970’S
In 1974, the first music television programmes became available on
tv allowing viewers to tune in a watch different music videos.
Australians Countdown and Sounds were the first two and were very
important in promoting new acts and their releases.

5. 1980’S
The 1980’s was a period in time where music videos started to go
mainstream and become a lot more well known. In 1981 the world
famous MTV channel was launched in the U.S and was the start of an
era of 24 hour a day music on television. Because of this by the mid
1980’s music videos had become an extremely important role in
music video marketing. Many artists during this period including
Duran Duran and Madonna gained huge success due to their well
created music videos. In 1993, one of the most successful music
videos of all time was released. Thriller by Michael Jackson which
lasts for 14 minutes and is said to have cost $800k to produce.

6. 1990’S
The 1990’s was a time period where directors started to become
more relevant. MTV started to list director names with the artist and
song credits which started gaining popularity for directors such as
Chris Cunningham and Hype Williams. Furthermore, during this time
Billboard had now started to have its own music video awards.

7. 2000’S
From 2005 onwards the internet became very friendly with music
videos with the launch of the biggest video platform site YouTube.
Making the uploading and viewing of all videos extremely straight
forward and easy allowing many more people to view them. This
created a lot more popularity for artists and is a key to many peoples
successes.