The First Music Video

The First Music Video

We have enjoyed watching music videos from many years, yet have probably never though how they came to be, why artists wanted to use pictures and visuals to help them promote the song and what was the very first music video.  I have completed some research and have found out just that!

First music videos were intended to further promote artist music by allowing listeners to engage further with the use of images and video,  the use of the video helps add to the overall music experience as one listens to the song and understands the video. It also allows the artist to become more memorable, as the use of a catch song and visuals to go with it, it can be very hard for an audience to forget and so the artist becomes more memorable as they may feature in the video or by hearing the artists voice.
it also is used for marketing and advertisement purposes, as to a larger audience the use of sound may attract a few but by  including visuals it will attract more viewers and even a broader audience. It also is used to advertise different product that may be used in the video, this generated money for the artists allowing the artist to create more videos and songs, expanding their image.
A music video is also created to allow the viewers to connect with the lyrics of the song and relate to them via the visuals of the video. This entices those who may relate to the story of the video, by creating a video and using the lyrics it helps the audience understand the concept and really relate to the story being shown.
It is extremely difficult to determine which video was the very first, this is because there are a variety of different types of music videos before the videos we know as today were created. Having said this I have completed some research and here are two examples of what the first music video could have been:

The Little Lost Child, Edward B. Marks & Joseph W. Stern (1894)



In 1894 Edward B. Marks,  sheet publisher Joseph W. Stern and George Thomas hired various artists and workers such a George Thomas, an electrician,  to enable them to promote the sales and the song of their song "The Little Lost Child".
This was a popular song with over two million copies of the sheet music being sold after the promotion of the first music video. To create the video they used an early type of image prijection, images where them projected on a screen simultaneously during the songs live performance. This was became a popular form of promotion known nonw as the illustrated song, this is a type of preformance art in the early 20th century in the USA.

This was the first step towards creating the music video, as you can see the video is in black and white and of poor quality as the video is very old.  You can also see that it doesn't look like a video that we know today as the video uses images, yet the video does use the images to expand the song and help the audience understand the story of the lyrics, this is what music videos are used for today.

Video Killed the Radio Star, The Buggles (1980)



Others believe that the first music video was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. People believe this as it was the very first video to be played on MTV on August 1st 1981.
There video was more advanced as it was in colour and used many effects such as layering, effective use if lightning, different transitions and different camera angles.
The video is also seen as the first music video because unlike the previous video that was shown, this  music video contains similar connotations of videos we see today.


To conclude, by researching the history of the music video it has made me understand how music videos have evolved and have without bands like The Buggles or people like Edward B. Marks, we may not have music videos we know today.
This research has also given me inspiration as the some of the first videos created used a deep and meaningful story within the video, I therefore will ensure that I create visuals that match the meaning of the lyrics, instead of having a video that has no message behind it.