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Talkies
In 1926, with the arrival of "talkies" many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts (produced by Warner Bros.) featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. Animation artist Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball", which is similar to a modern karaoke machine. -
St Louis Blues
Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a two-reel short film called St. Louis Blues featuring a dramatized performance of the hit song. -
Cartoons
Early cartoons featured musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the cartoons. The early animated films by Walt Disney, such as the Silly Symphonies shorts and especially Fantasia, which featured several interpretations of classical pieces, were built around music. -
Soundies
Soundies, were musical films that often included short dance sequences, reminiscent to later music videos, these stopped being produced in 1947 -
St. Louis Blues
Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a two-reel short film called St. Louis Blues featuring a dramatised performance of the hit song. Numerous other musicians appeared in short musical subjects during this period. -
Tony Bennett
A video of the artit walking along the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London, was set to his recording of the song 'Stranger in Paradise'. In his autobiography, he claimed to have made the first music video. -
A Hard Day's Night
In 1964, the Beatles starred in their first feature film A Hard Day's Night, directed by Richard Lester. Shot in black-and-white and presented as a mock documentary, it interspersed comedic and dialogue sequences with musical tones. -
MTV
Music videos went 'mainstream' with the introduction of MTV. The channel shows 24 hour a day music, first airing 'Video Killed the Radio Star'. Many artists, such as Duran Duran and Madonna owe their success to this outlet. -
Directors
MTV started listing the name of the director along with the song title and artist, which almost validated them as a form of media and art. -
Other countries
MTV launched channels around the world to show music videos produced in each local market: MTV Latin America in 1993, MTV India in 1996, and MTV Mandarin in 1997, among others. MTV2, originally called "M2" and meant to show more alternative and older music videos, debuted in 1996. -
YouTube
Thismade the viewing of online video much faster and easier. It also uses ad's to make the viewing of these videos free. Subsequently it has aloud fans to make their own fan made videos, and lyric videos, thus less promotion is needed. Google Videos, Yahoo! Video, Facebook and Myspace's video functionality use similar technology.