History of Music Videos
Originally, music videos were named musical short films. These short films started coming about around the 1920's but mostly came into prominence in the 1980's through MTV's promotional features. Prior to the 1980's, these clips were known as "illustrated songs", "filmed inserts", "promotional (promo) film", "promo clip", "promo video", "song video", "song clip" or "film clip".
Now it's simply known as one thing, a music video.
One difference that you will notice with the evolution of music videos is that performance based videos were more or less the only type of videos developed. This really changed through a massively successful Michael Jackson song - 'Thriller'. This was quite a shock to most as this was among the first few songs that took a narrative based idea and took that as its platform. The sudden change of performance style allowed other artists to be more imaginative with their video.
Technology has also had a massive effect with the evolution of music videos as the use of special effects and CGI (computer generated imagery) enables the artist to include and do what they want.
This form of editing, among others, further widened the music styles that artists could pursue for their music video - especially abstract based videos.
Merchandising has only grown through time in accordance with music videos. Originally music videos wash purely for entertainment purposes with no wide variety of publicity other than posters, radio and news.
Now it would be virtually impossible to miss a highly rated musician. Not only is our technology better in producing a larger amount of posters or merchandise. But our media is far more expansive. Television has more channels including more news and several channels devoted to music. Youtube has also allowed artists to produced promo and official videos allowing easier access to the music and creating that platform where celebrities can gain recognition, furthering their popularity.
Short summary of the evolution of music videos:
1926 - 1959 - Talkies, soundies and shorts.
1950's - Early music clips.
1960 - 1973 - Promotional clips.
1974 - 1980 - Beginnings of music television (MTV).
1981 - 1991 - Music videos go mainstream.
1992 - 2004 - Rise of the directors. (Directors are deemed a necessary addition to filming music videos to promote the artist as best as possible. Film ideas become further expansive e.g Madonna's videos under David Fincher.)
2005 - Present - Internet becomes video friendly (Youtube publicises music - Vevo).
