History Of Music

Soundies- 1940s
Soundies were an early version of the music video: three-minute musical films, produced in New York, Chicago, and Hollywood between 1940 and 1946, often including short dance sequences. The films were displayed on the Panoram, a coin-operated film jukebox or machine music, in nightclubs, bars, restaurants, factory lounges, and amusement centres.

Soundies covered all genres of music, from classical to big-band swing, and from hillbilly novelties to patriotic songs.

Beginning in 1941 Soundies experimented with expanding its format, and filmed comedy Soundies with Our Gang star Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, Broadway comic Willie Howard, dialect comedians Smith and Dale, and silent-movie comedians The Keystone Kops. Most of these films were non-musical, and were not as well received as the musical Soundies. Soundies abandoned the comedy-sketch idea, but continued to produce filmed versions of comic novelty songs. They were regularly described and reviewed in the entertainment and music trade publications, such as Billboard.

Scopitone early 60s
Scopitone is a type of jukebox featuring a 16 mm film component. It was a prototype of music video. The Italian Cinebox/Colorama and Colour-Sonics were competing, lesser-known technologies of the time.

Based on technology developed during World War II, colour 16 mm film clips with a magnetic soundtrack were designed to be shown in a specially designed jukebox. The first Scopitones were made in France.

Scopitones spread to West Germany, where the Kessler Sisters burst out of twin steamer trunks to sing "Quando Quando" on the dim screen that surmounted the jukebox. Scopitone went on to appear in bars in England, including a coffee bar in Swanage where Telstar was a favourite. By 1964, approximately 500 machines were installed in the USA.

1960s
One of the earliest performance clips in 1960s pop was the promo film made by The Animals for their breakthrough 1964 hit "House Of The Rising Sun". This high-quality colour clip was filmed in a studio on a specially-built set; it features the group in a lip-synched performance, depicted through an edited sequence of tracking shots, close-ups and long shots, as singer Eric Burdon, guitarist Hilton Valentine and bassist Chas Chandler walked around the set in a series of choreographed moves.

1970s
The long-running British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s, although the BBC placed strict limits on the number of 'outsourced' videos TOTP could use. Therefore a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week. This was still experimental.

Early 80s
In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV (Music Television) launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. With this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing. Many important acts of this period, most notably Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran and Madonna, owed a great deal of their success to the skilful construction and seductive appeal of their videos.

In 1983, the most successful and influential music video of all time was released — the nearly 14-minute-long video for Michael Jackson's song "Thriller". The video set new standards for production, having cost US$500,000 to film. That video, along with earlier videos by Jackson for his songs "Billie Jean" and "Beat It", also was instrumental in getting music videos by African American artists played on MTV. Earlier, such videos had been rare: according to MTV, this was because it initially conceived itself as a rock-music-oriented channel, although musician Rick James was outspoken in his criticism of the cable channel, claiming in 1983 that MTV's refusal to air the music video for his song "Super Freak" and clips by other African-American performers was "blatant racism".

Late 80s-90s
In 1985, MTV launched the channel VH1 (then known as "VH-1: Video Hits One"), featuring softer music, and meant to cater to an older generation than MTV. MTV Europe was launched in 1987, and MTV Asia in 1991. Another important development in music videos was the launch of The Chart Show on the UK's Channel 4 in 1986. This was a program which consisted entirely of music videos (the only outlet many videos had on British TV at the time), without presenters. Instead, the videos were linked by then state of the art computer graphics.

The video for the 1985 Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" established the use of computer animation, and helped make the song an international hit. In 1986, Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer" used special effects and animation techniques developed by British studio Aardman Animation. The video for "Sledgehammer" would go on to be a phenomenal success and win nine MTV Video Music Awards.

In 1988, the MTV show Yo! MTV Raps debuted; the show helped to bring hip hop music to a mass audience for the first time.