A music video is a visual accompaniment to a sound track, usually to help promote this tracks author(s) and/or album.

This media has evolved dramatically over the last several decades.

First video: Dickson Experimental Sound Film (circa 1894), this is considered to be the first music video. It comprised of a music soundtrack over the top of a short film.

• First popular video: Video Killed The Radio Star (1979). This music video by The Buggles was the first popular music video paving the way for MTV.

The following music videos are what we consider key moments in the progression of the music video

Click on the pictures to view the video

• Take on me – this song by A-Ha in 1985 was the first ever animated music video.

• The effect seen in the video was created bydrawing over keyframesin the footage from thevideo shoot.

• Bohemian rhapsody – done by Queen was It was also the first music video in the sense that it was shot on video

instead of film • Queen made a video for this to air on Top Of The Pops, a

popular British music show, because the song was too complex to perform live. It started a trend in the UK of making videos for songs to air in place of live performances.

• Michael Jackson – a massive icon in the music world is famed for having a number of ground breaking videos such as thriller and bad.

• He also has the mostexpensive music videowith around $7 millionfor the single scream in 1995 featuring Janet Jackson.

• Rick Astley – the first viral music video, known on the web as being ‘Rick-rolled’. This is by playing his song ‘never gonna give you up’

• The first known instance of a rickroll occurred in May 2007 on 4chan,and soon took theinternet by storm.

• Gorillaz – A modern virtual band, capitalizing on synergy between modern technology to promote and develop the concept. created by blur’s Damon Albarn and cartoonist Jamie Hewlett.

• MTV or music television was first broadcasted in 1981 and set the stage ready for many other music based channels to be developed.

• They were the first to coin the phrase VJ or video jockey which was a play on the more popular disc jockey or DJ.

• each year they hold the massively popular MTV video music awards to showcase the best music videos of that year.

• First broadcasted in 1964 the objective of this programme was originally to showcase top chart music of that week.

• Originally only intended to have a few programmes it ran for over 42 years!

• The show was cancelled in 2006 but survives on through its annual Christmas special and top of the pops 2 which takes videos from the TOTP archives.

• Myspace was the first dedicated music networking site where aspiring bands would post their tracks or albums, however this was soon hijacked by general people who just wanted a place to socialise. With the creation of facebook these people have since migrated and Myspace is back to what it used to be.

• With virtual distribution becoming popular among independent artists free music hosting websites have developed to fill the demand. Popular sites are ones such as Bandcamp that allow artists to customise their settings fully to their own requirements.

• Say You’ll Haunt Me by Stone Sour is a good example of the impact of technology. By using simple industry tricks ‘holograms’ of the band members are created it also shows the quality of the modern music video as a form of art.

• The development of the green screen technology has made the creation of music videos a lot simpler. While as previously it would have required a team of people now it can be done by a handful. One example of how green screen can be utilised to great effect is in the video ET by Katy Perry.

• By extension both these videos have dedicated directors to manage all of these new elements that have to be accounted for.

• In the modern day with new technologies being utilised the music video industry has started to experiment with these. An example of an experimental 3D video is doubtful comforts by blue roses