History of music videos

A music video is a short film that is meant to present a visual representation of a song. Modern music videos were primarily made and used as marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. MTV which is a famous music television channel, launched in 1981, originated the format of end-to-end music video programming without any conventional programs. 
Music videos are often called promotion videos or promos, as they are commonly used as promotional devices. Music videos are termed short-form music videos to differentiate them from full length movies relevant to music. In the 1980's the term 'rock video' was commonly used to describe this form of entertainment, although the term has fallen into obsolescence.
The ealiest music videos or music promos were filmed in the mid 1950's, however in the 1920's films by animators such as Oskar Fischinger were accompanied by musical scores labeled 'visual music'.  Walt Disneys 'Silly Symphonies' were also built around music. The Warner Brothers cartoons, like Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, were initially built around specific songs from upcoming Warner Brothers musical films. Live action musical shorts, featuring successful popular performers such as Cab Calloway, were also spread evenly to theaters  The Panoram juxebox with eight three-minute Soundies were popular in taverns and night spots, but the fad faded during the second World War. 
In 1940, Walt Disney released an animated film based on famous pieces of classical music called Fantasia. The beginning of the musical films were made especially for television, played by the Snader Telescriptions who had more than 1000 shorts musical presentations filmed for the use of a television filler between 1950 and 1954.  The Snader Telescriptions covered the entire musical landscape. Although most of them were of stereotypical pop performers, with exceptional performances from rhythm and blues, jazz and country music. Throughout the years, Telescriptions have re-released compilations, such as Showtime at the Apollo.
In 1956 Tony Bennett was filmed walking along the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London as his recording of 'Stranger in Paradise' played. This film was distributed and played by UK and USA television stations, Bennett later pronounced that he made the first music video. According to the Internet Accuracy Project, disk jockey J.P. 'The Big Bopper' Richardson was the first to coin the phrase 'rock video'. Around the 1960's the Scopitone (visual juxebox) was invented in France and short films were produced by many French artist, such as Serge Gainsbourg, Francoise Hardy and Jacques Dutronc to accompany their songs. This spread to other countries and similar machines were introduced such as the Cinebox in Italy and Color-sonic in the USA.  In the 1960's French techonology developed for the aerial photogrpahy during the war was familirised to create the Scopitone, which is a modern visual jukebox. The Scopotone took off well in France with original scenes of various bands playing, but when it was introduced to the USA the videos had sharp quality, with crooners wondering through crowds of girls in bikinis or "jungle" furs.  As much as the Scopitone also hit off well in the USA, the involvement of organized crime led to its downfall, just as rock and roll was being brought in. Additionally in the 60's, the Light Show became popular for live performances, combining music with complex visuals.
In 1964 The Beatles film 'A Hard Day's Night', directed by Richard Lester, was the first work defining the development of modern music. The musical pieces in this film set out the basic visual vocabulary of todays music videos, arousing a huge number of contamporary musicians and countless subsequent pop and rock group music videos. Although the American TV series which ran from 1966 to 1968 called The Monkees was another important influence on the development of the music video genre. Each episode along with a number of specially made segements that were created to accompany the Mokees songs used in the series. The Beatles the genre to a new level with their innovating films for 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and 'Penny Lane' made in 1967, which used techniques from underground and avant garde film, such as reversed film effects, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and rhythmic editing. This was created at the peak of the psychedelic music period, which these two landmark films are amoung the very first purpose-made concept videos that attempt to 'illustrate' the song in an artful manner, rather than just creating a film of an idealized performance. In 1966 the music video of Bob Dylan performing 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' filmed by D A Pennebaker shows ironic portrayal of a performance and the random inclusion of a celebrity Allen Ginsberg in a non-performing role also became anchor of the form.

        In 1966 The Beatles started filming short promotional films for their songs which were later aired on television variety shows. During this year the band had their last tour and used their promotional films to tour for them. It then became a common place for artists to do this and similar bands such as The Byrds and The Beach Boys were also filming promotional films. The very first music video of the modern era was produced by an ex member of Monkee, michael Nesmith who started making short musical films for Saturday Night Live in 1979. He went on to release Elephant parts in 1981, which was the first video album and first winner of a Grammy for music video. He also made a show called Television parts which aired on NBC television, but this was not very successful, due to network meddling like intrusive laugh tracks. Throughout the 1980's promotional videos had a de regiueur (strict dress code), a rise which was famously parodied by UK, BBC television programme not The Nine O'clock News who produced a spoof music video 'Nice Video, Shame About The Song'. In the information technology era, they are now popular songs themselves, but also are being sold in collections on video tape and DVD. Fanatics of music videos will sometimes watch them muted just for their aesthetic value. Aslong as the internet has been around, more and more fan-created videos have been appearing, especially since the 1990's and have continued into the next century. These are generally made by synchornizing existing footage from other sources with the song, often from television series or movies. More commonly the source material is drawn from animated cartoons, such as anime but also including america animation series. Since the music and the film footage is licensed, ditributing these videos tends to be copyright infrigement on both parts. Although, it is usually the owners of film footage who file lawsuits, particularly large American corporations who fear infusion of their characters such as Charlie Brown, by these unlicensed videos.