1895; Thomas Edison's studio is the location of the "first" music video.
The oldest known film with music was made for the Kinetophone, a device developed by Thomas Edison’s lab that showed moving pictures and was also fitted out with a phonograph. In the film, its inventor,
William Dickson, plays music from a popular operetta on a violin as two men dance beside him. The soundtrack was recorded separately on a wax cylinder that went missing for several decades, turned up at the Edison National Historical Site in the early 1960s, and was finally reunited with the picture in 1998. Intended primarily as a test, the “Dickson Experimental
Sound Film,” as the clip is known, was not released, in part because the Kinetophone never caught on with consumers.
1920: Sound-on-film ushers in the age of musical shorts
In April 1923, New York City’s Rivoli Theater presented the first motion pictures with sound-on-film, a system that synchronized movies and their soundtracks. (“The Jazz Singer,” the first full-length talkie in cinema history, would premiere in 1927 and use the same technology.) Many early sound-on-film productions featured vaudeville stars, opera singers, bands and other popular musicians; known as musical shorts, these clips were played before feature films well into the 1940s. Later, during the 1950s, musical shorts made a comeback as filler footage between television movies, which were not yet edited to fit into time slots.
1960s: The Beatles marry movies and music
Considered to be the first music video to be broadcast on television. The Beatles were already making some very popular full-feature movies and were looking for a way to promote their record releases without having to make in-person appearances (primarily in the USA). The concept is fairly straightforward and was meant to blend in with the television shows that were being made at the time. Perhaps more than any other band before them, The Beatles harnessed the power of film to market their records and express themselves as artists. In addition to starring in full-length features such as “Help” and “A Hard Day’s Night,” the Fab Four recorded dozens of promotional clips—some with narratives and others composed largely of psychedelic images—that were broadcast in their native England and overseas. Many rock and roll bands of the late 1960s and 1970s followed their lead, releasing increasingly sophisticated promo films that shared the lineup with live performances on televised music variety shows.
Although the origins of music videos began with “musical short films” that first appeared in the 1920s, they really came into prominence in the 1980s when MTV created their channel around the medium and it changed how we received our music. Instead of just listening we now had a medium for “viewing” music. Indeed, it revolutionized the music industry.
The advent of high-quality color videotape recorders and portable video cameras happened to coincide with this new wave of “filming” one’s songs and MTV quickly churned them out in droves. Because some of the keys to the development of the modern music video were the advent of relatively inexpensive and easy-to-use video recording and editing equipment and the development of visual effects created with techniques such as image compositing, there was this initial DIY work ethos inherent to the beginning of this new era. However, eventually, as with any new art form made available to a creative community who would come to be limited only by their imaginations, however, as the genre developed, another wave, one created by music video directors schooled in the medium they were trained in to shoot movies, increasingly turned to 35 mm film as the preferred medium, and costs shot up. In 1983, the most successful, influential, and iconic music video of all time was released: the nearly 14-minute-long video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” directed by John Landis, which set new standards for production, costing over $800,000 to film (in 2018, this would be the equivalent of over $2 million).
The music video industry can be divided into the ‘Pre-MTV’ and ‘Post-MTV’ periods. The modern music videos that we know now came into existence when the 24-hour music television channel MTV was launched in the year 1981. The Buggles’ ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ was the very first music video that was broadcasted on MTV. In the initial few years, the channel didn’t have a bank of videos to play. But gradually the trend of producing videos along with the music started and MTV became a powerful medium to discover new music and artists.
However, there were many events that took place much before MTV’s entry, which contributed to the creation of the term ‘music video’.
American singer Tony Bennett believes that he invented music video in 1953 with his song ‘Stranger in Paradise’. He wrote in his autobiography ‘The Good Life: The Autobiography Of Tony Bennett’, “I filmed what I believe to be the first music video – I was shot walking in Hyde Park along the Serpentine while my recording of “Stranger in Paradise” was played. The clip was distributed to all the local TV stations in the UK and America, where it was aired on shows like Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.”
According to Rolling Stone, it was Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody that invented music videos. It was the success of this song’s promotional clip that compelled record companies to pay attention to videos as a way to market new releases and increase sales.
Whether it was the talkies, Bennett, or Queen, the fact of the matter is that each of these milestones played a crucial role in preparing the world for the post-MTV era. Singers became performers and entertainers. Synchronized one-dimensional dancing videos turned into high-production value short movies. Immersive audio and video experience are what artists started to offer through music videos to their listeners. And Michael Jackson’s body of work is one of the biggest examples of it.
How Brands Harnessed The Power Of Music Videos?
In the 1980s and the 1990s, the revenue generated from the sale of albums and concert tickets was the primary source of income for music creators and producers. But the music programming industry witnessed a dip in sales during the early 90s. MTV shifted its focus from music shows to reality shows and thus ended the golden period of the 24-hour music channel.
Things changed in 2005 when the American video-sharing website YouTube made its debut. The music video industry was revived in that year, and since then it has grown from strength to strength.
Let’s go back to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It holds the record of number one best-selling album with 62 million copies sold (claimed sales). On YouTube, the official video has garnered 542 million views! It has no product placements as it was made at a time when the concept didn’t exist.
But the opportunity of monetizing music videos exists now. Therefore, it doesn’t come as a surprise that brands want their share of fame; even if it means paying bags full of money just for a few minutes (or seconds) in a music video. In addition, placements in music videos are not time sensitive like TV shows or movies. People stream their favourite music over and over again. If it features top artists, then brands can see a steady stream of revenue being generated from an investment they made 5 or 10 years ago.
Lady Gaga’s 9 and a half minute video ‘Telephone’ has not one but twelve brand placements, with Diet Coke, Virgin Mobile, Monster Heartbeats, and Miracle Whip being some of them. This 9-minute video got the featured brands noticed by over 296 million people.
The Impact of the Digital Age
The next curve of growth in the music video industry life cycle became visible in the last five years due to the advent of social media and technology. The molds of conventional collaboration between an artist and a brand are getting broken every day. And what’s growing in its place is an environment that thrives on creativity, smart use of technology, commentary on culture, and rich visual language.
Case in point: Pharrell Williams’ viral song ‘Happy’. It started as a soundtrack for the movie Despicable Me 2. The song became a massive hit across the world and 100s of tribute videos were uploaded on YouTube. The end result – the movie became one of the highest grosser of 2013 because of its association with Williams’ song.
As the music video evolved and became a must for every musical artist (from 1991 to 2001, Billboard had its own Music Video Awards), artists and directors continued to raise the bar of both creativity and expenses. Two of the most expensive videos produced of all time were Madonna’s “Bedtime Story,” which cost $5 million, and Michael and Janet Jackson’s “Scream,” which purportedly cost $7 million, and remains the most expensive video ever made. By the mid-2000s the medium at the forefront of viewing videos was changing. MTV and many of its sister channels had largely abandoned showing music videos in favor of reality television shows which had become more popular with its audiences, and which MTV had itself helped to pioneer with their show “The Real World,” which had actually premiered back in 1992. 2005 saw the launch of YouTube, which made online viewing of videos faster and easier; and soon other platforms (Google Videos, Facebook, Vevo, etc.) appeared using similar video functionality technology. These websites changed the manner in which music videos were viewed and some artists began to see success as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely online. In 2009, Thirty Seconds to Mars’ music video “Kings and Queens” was uploaded to YouTube on the same day of its release (where it has garnered over one hundred million views) and was featured as iTunes Store video of the week and one of its most downloaded videos ever to be featured.
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