Harriet, Ben&Jake's: Timeline Of Music Video History

From the 1900's Edison invented the gramophone in the USA, this was the very first element that moved music from being solely live and audiovisual experience to a recorded form of listening to it.

1923-'The Talkies' were the first to mix sound and vision together. Before this music was played live over the top of the film .

1940 - Peak period for MGM musicals, sound and vision on screen with over the top dance routines.

1950-'Jailhouse Rock' a TV m usical, was first recorded in colour.

1963- UK's first music TV program begins called ' Ready Steady Go' on ITV.

1964- Start of 'Top Of The Pops' on BBC. The Beatles were one of the first to

send in a promo film of them singing 'Strawberry Fields' if

a band could not make it to sing live on Top Of The Pops they would send a video in of them performing instead.

1975- However the first official music video was not released until this time. Queen 'Bohemian Rhapsody ' produced by Bruce Gower. The reason for making this video was because it w a s too hard to perform live. The video was created in three hours and cost £3,500.

1977- Saturday night fever (John Badam, USA)

1979- A new music programme introduced to T.V called 'Popclips', this was the inspiration for what would become MTV.

1980- David Bo

wie: 'Ashes to Ashes' On The Beach, really artistic influence.

1981- The start of 'MTV' the first 24 hour music T.V channel! 'Video Killed The Radio Star', 1st music video played on Music Television. Mike Nesbitt created MTV. To start with only a lucky few could view it.

- There were only 200 video's available at this time and this is what caused the British to make more and more videos this was a great way for them to get established in the US.

- Tim Pope one of the first music directors was a singer, but unsuccessful, so ended up as a director working for the likes of the cure. He pioneered videos not containing scenes of the band performing, e.g. 'It's My Life' by Talk Talk.

1985- CD's first available in the shops to buy.

Now music videos have shifted from being artistically influenced to being promotional material. There are many artists which have had award winning videos.

- Michael Jackson: Thriller. Michael Jackson became The King Of Pop starting off with simple videos then moved towards performance orientated video. Many artists followed his trend of strict dance routines like in 'Thriller'. Which cost 1/2 million dollars.