History of Music Videos!

 Music videos, in their modern form, were introduced in the 1970s, but their origins go back much further.

•Early 20th Century (1920s-1950s): Short musical films (soundies) were played on visual jukeboxes like the Scopitone.

•1960s: The Beatles and Bob Dylan made promotional films that resemble modern music videos.

•1975: Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen is often credited as the first true music video.

•1981: MTV launched, making music videos a key part of the industry.

So while music videos existed in some form for decades, their mainstream introduction really began in the 1970s and exploded in popularity with MTV in the 1980s.

Some suggest that the first music video was created in 1894 by Joseph Stern and Edward Mark, who set a recording of their song “The Little Lost Child” to a moving slide show and marketed it as an “illustrated song.” Though the average American did not yet own equipment to play a recording of the song, over 2 million copies of the sheet music of “The Little Lost Child” were sold.

The first music video ever is challenging to define - Artists like Bessie Smith created a short film to promote the hit song St. Louis Blues as early as 1929. Even earlier works were recorded, like The Little Lost Child were paired with a series of projected images to promote music in 1894.