History of the Music Video

A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes.^[1] Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Although the origins of music videos date back to musical short films that first appeared in the 1920's, they came into prominence in the 1980s when MTV based their format around the medium. Prior to the 1980s, these works were described by various terms including "illustrated song", "filmed insert", "promotional (promo) film", "promotional clip", "promotional video", "song video", "song clip" or "film clip".  -Wikipedia

One of the early examples of a music video would be St. Louis Blue's by Bessie Smith in 1929.

In 1940 Walt Disney released Fantasia, a cartoon based around classical music.This could be thought of as a music video as the cartoon was created around the music to fit it.







One of the earlier examples of a music video would be St. Louis Blue's by Bessie Smith in 1929.