Timeline of Music Videos
1894 - Sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern projected a series of still images on a screen simultaneous to live performances. This would be known as the illustrated song, the first step toward music video.
1926 - Arrival of "talkies" and many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts (produced by Warner Bros) featured many bands, vocalists and dancers.
Early 1930s - cartoons featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the cartoons
1940-7 - Soundies were musical films that often included short dance sequences, similar to later music videos
Mid 1940s - Musician Louis Jordan made short films for his songs, some of which were spliced together into a feature film, Lookout Sister
Musical films were also an important part of music videos, and several well-known music videos have imitated the style of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s to the 1950s. For example, Madonna's 1985 video for "Material Girl"
Late 1950s - Scopitone, a visual jukebox, was invented in France and short films were produced by many French artists
1964 - Beatles starred in their feature film, A Hard Day's Night, which was shot in black and white as a mockumentary
1965 - Beatles began making promotional clips for distribution and broadcast in different countries, so they could promote their record releases without having to make in-person appearances.
1974 - Australian TV shows Countdown and Sounds, were significant in developing and popularising what would later become the music video genre in Australia and other countries
1975 - Queen promo video made to show their new single "Bohemian Rhapsody" on BBCs Top of the Pops. Song described as "widely credited as the first global hit single for which an accompanying video was central to the marketing strategy".
1979 - "Video killed the Radio Star" clip made which was the first music video played on MTV in 1981
1981 - MTV launched - 24 hour a day music on television
Innovations in the development of modern music video were the development of relatively inexpensive and easy to use video recording and editing equipment.
1983 - 14 minute long video for Michael Jackson's "Thriller", directed by John Landis. One of the most successful, influential and iconic music videos
1997 - iFilm launched, hosted short videos including music videos
Mid 2000s - MTV largely abandoned showing music videos in favour of reality Tv shows
2005 - YouTube launched, which made the viewing of online video much faster and easier, Google Videos, Yahoo! Video, Facebook and Myspace's video function used similar technology
At its launch, iTunes store provided a section of free music videos in high quality compression to be watched
2009 - VEVO launched. The videos on VEVO are syndicated to YouTube, with Google and VEVO sharing the advertising revenue
2010 - Lyric videos started being made and Vertical videos started being made that are tailored to mobile devices
Contemporary context - who are the major players in this industry (info graphic). How do companies finance, distribute and exchange their products. How do audiences access them? (consider recent developments in technology)
The largest corporations are EMI records, Sony, Vivendi Universal, AOL time warner and BMG, and are collectively known as the big five.