One of the first recorded music videos was ‘St Louis Blues’ by Bessie Smith, in 1929. It was shown in cinemas for three years due to it being a massive hit. It wasn’t really until the 1980’s though that music videos became ‘big’.

In 1956, Tony Bennett filmed his music video for ‘Stranger In Paradise’ in Hyde Park, London. It was played across UK and US television stations. He claimed that his music video was the first one but clearly, it wasn’t. This was however the first example of playing music videos on TV and this lead to the creation of MTV, Top of the Pops and other TV music channels.

It was in 1964 that The Beatles released the music video for ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. This was a crucial moment in the development of music videos as they use many conventions that are used today by contemporary artists.

In the 1970’s there was a change in music videos in the sense that there was more emphasis on just the artist sing. It lead to the ‘Cross-Cutting’ stage where the song would portray a story that accompanied the lyrics and ‘cross-cuts’ to the artist singing it. This was down to the editing process and dealing with more professional techniques. This ‘Cross-Cutting’ was used in the Jackson 5’s music video for ‘I Want You Back’.

In 1980, Queen released their video for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and this style created a whole new era for the music video. This lead to the introduction of ‘Top of the Pops’ which would promote the music and then this also created a competition between artists.

In 1981, MTV was introduced and the first video aired was The Buggles ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’. It was a breakthrough in the evolution of music videos as there was a lot more development in the sense of editing and ‘overlaying’. MTV was responsible for the success of artists like Madonna as it played a central role of marketing.

In 1982, Michael Jackson released his music video for ‘Thriller’. This video was the pioneer of the ‘storyline’ video which has a plot, almost like a ‘mini’ movie. It contains sophisticated visuals and it took the music industry to another level. Now music videos were really being seen as promotion and made into high-budget productions.

In 1985, A’ha released their video for ‘Take on Me’. It’s a combination of comic book and live action and is called ‘rotoscoping’. It took 16 weeks to complete. This shows how much the song relies on this type of promotion as it was the only form of marketing for a song in the 20th century.

In 2012, Emeli Sande released ‘Next To Me’ music video. Due to Emeli being a contemporary ‘soul’ artist, she needs to have her music video reflect her genre and many other artists do this too.

In 2013, Iggy Azalea released ‘Work’. The adoption of the ‘Sex Appeal’ of females has monopolised the music industry as creates more views i.e. more profitable, rather than choosing the more traditional methods because they are less profitable.