The History of Music Video

The Early Days
There is a long history of the mixing of moving film images and musical over-score, this has been seen from as far back as the 1920's, usually used in early experimental film movements. film musicals were very popular forms of fusing image and music, the first of which being "The King of Jazz", filmed in technicolor , is a major a part of America’s musical heritage that few people today know ever existed. The film has no plot, but consists of a series of extraordinary production numbers, with the music supplied by Paul Whiteman, who plays - "the King of Jazz," and his orchestra.


Then in 1940 came the first jukebox from the US that used an early version of the music video these were three-minute musical films, produced in New York, Chicago, and Hollywood between 1940 and 1946, often including short dance sequences. The films were displayed on the Panoram, a coin-operated film Jukebox or machine music, in nightclubs, bars, restaurants, factory lounges, and amusement centers. "Soundies" covered a huge range of genre's and had special directing teams who specialized in creating these short films.


Then in 1960 came "Scopitones" which were the French version of a common jukebox and were seen as the first machine that properly could be seen as a model for music promotion as these would feature performances shown on a 16mm film component. The Italian Cinebox/Colorama and Color-Sonics were competing, lesser-known technologies of the time. Based on technology developed during World War II.  The performances on the screens of these boxes featured the actual artist who were on the playlist one of which known to feature a performance by Dionne Warwick.


1960's
This era saw the beginning of the music and film revolution, the music labels and managers by this time had realized that music could be marketed not just on the sound of the band/artist as people would also pay to see them perform and go about there everyday lives. "Hard Days Night" is a 1964 British comedy film written by Alun Owen, starring The Beatles - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star—during the height of Beatlemania. It was directed by Richard Leister and originally released by United Artists. The film was made in the style of a mock documentary, describing a couple of days in the lives of the group. This is a perfect example of a film that ticks the boxes of a rock film that attracts a huge audience because of the Beatles success and therefore harboring massive profits. It was because of this film that there were other small films made by other artists, many of which being heavily drug influenced, this is because of the high drug influence on bands music of the swinging sixties where there was a high level of LSD abuse whilst writing music.
1970's 
By the Seventies music videos were becoming a huge part of the music industry and they were even used on Top of the Pops if the band were on tour at the time of the show or were not available to perform. although it was much more in the public eye there was still a heavy drug influenced and experimental twist to many songs and accompanying videos. 
1980's
As the world was introduced to cable T.V and there became a gap in the very organized and tightly scheduled television listings other shows were able to break through. Because of the uprising in music video and the need for artists to use music videos to promote their every new single, the changes and improvements in technology enabled a channel called MTV which is an American cable television network based in New York city and launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJ's. This channel allowed bands to use their videos to help sell new releases.



Lewis Holgate