MUSIC VIDEO

ORIGINS:
Due to the fact that moving image video cameras weren't invented until around the 1920s, and music has been around since anyone can remember its not a surprise that music videos are quite a new aspect of music in the long run of things.
The first time we saw the premature ideas to what has lead to todays music video was in 1894 when  a sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired electrician George Thomas and various performers to promote sales of their song The Little Lost Child.
Thomas projected, using a magic lantern, a series of still images onto a screen simultaneous to live performances. This later became a popular for of entertainment known as the illustrated song, the first step towards today's music video.
In 1902-1917 was the Phonoscene era. Phonoscene was a big development within the sound film industry. It was a combination of a chronophone sound recording with a chronograph film shot and actors lip-syncing to the sound recording. The recording and film were synchronised by a mechanism patented by Leon Gaumont in 1902. The first phonoscenes were presented by Gaumont in 1902 in France.
Next came the talkies, soundies and shorts during 1926 to 1959. In 1926 many musical short films were produced thanks to talkies. Then a technology called shorts was produced by Warner Bros. which featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. These finally lead to the Spooney Melodies in 1930 which was the first true musical video series. Shorts usually last 6 minutes and featured Art Deco-style animations and backgrounds combined with film of the performer singing.
Another form of music videos were one-song films called "promotional clips" made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox. These were just short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie set bandstand, made for playing. Thousands of soundies were made.
Other important aspects of todays music video was musical films. Several well known music videos have been based of come straight out of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s to 1950s.
The 1950s were a big year for music videos. A segment was aired on NBC which showed a live orchestra for the recorded event. In 1957 Tony Bennett was filmed walking a long Hyde Park in London as his recording of Stranger in Paradise played; this film was then distributed in UK and US television stations. 1959 is the year that it is thought the phrase "music video" became used as a defining term of what was yet to come.
In the late 1950s and into 1960s the Scopitone (a visual jukebox) which was invented in france. It displayed a short film by the artist and was then accompanied by their song. This idea then spread to several other countries like the Cinebox in Italy and the Colour-Sonic in the USA.
For the next decade several directors and producers experimented with videoing artists lip-syncing to their songs in studios and other different locations and then editing the audio and video together.
One of the earliest Videos of a Top 40 hit was Jan & Deans's Surf City which was produced in the summer of 1963 on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. This video is still available for download and viewing on YouTube.com.

After all this music videos started to finally take shape and a huge turning point for music videos was when The Beatles started making a series of films. They started off with a quite simple idea and then onto make more lavish videos. After making several videos they started doing promotional clips (known as insert films) for distribution and promotion in other countries (mainly the USA) to promote their new music. You can also get a DVD with several of The Beatles music videos on today.
1967-1973 brought the growing importance of promotional clips. Then from 1974-1980 was when we first saw the signs of music television. Australia was an early adopter of the music video format as was New Zealand. The United Kingdom had the long-running British TV show Top Of The Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s although the BBC had strict limits on the number of "outsourced" videos TOTPs could use. After this bands started realising promo videos for new singles and long running shows produced and aired videos. In the United States american alternative punk rock group Devo created many self-produced music videos which were released on video cassette. These were arguably some of the first true long-form videos productions. Their videos "The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprise" was the first to use computer and traditional animation.
Music videos became mainstream during 1981 to 1991. The US video channel MTV launched in 1981 airing the ever popular "Video Killed the Radio Star" and beginning of an era of 24-hour-a-day music television. With this new outlet for videos, by the mid 1980s it played a big role in popular music marketing.
1992 - 2004 brought the importance and rise of directors. In december 1992 MTV began listing directors of the music video with the artist and song credits. After 2005 the internet played an even bigger part to the development of music videos. After years of improvements and developments to music videos we are finally left with lyrics videos. In 2010 after the major move to internet, we've seen the official rise of the "lyrics video". This is just based on having the song playing, with the lyrics coming up on the screen in time, similar to the class sing-a-long kids game.