History of Pop Promos

Pop Promo: A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music/song.


History
The first music video dates back to 1894 when sheet music publishers still ran the music business. Edward B. Masen and Joe Stern promoted sales of their song 'The little lost child' with a series of projected still images shown simultaneously with live performances and blurry animations of kittens; in what became a popular form of entertainment known as the illistrated song. With the arrival of the sound films and talkies in 1926, many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts which were produced by Warner Bros, featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. The series entitled 'Spooney melodies' was the first true musical video series. The shorts were typically about six minutes in duration, and featured art deco style animations and backgrounds combined with film of the performer singing the song.



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. In 1975, the band Queen ordered Bruce Gowers to make a promo video for their new single "Bohemian Rhapsody" to show it in Top Of The Pops; this is also notable for being entirely shot and edited on videotape.



In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV 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.

The first video to be banned by MTV was Queens 1982 hit "Body Language." Due to thinly veiled homoerotic undertones plus lots of skin and lots of sweat (but apparently not enough clothing, save that worn by the fully clothed members of Queen themselves), it was deemed unsuitable for a television audience at the time. However, the channel did air Olivia Newton-John's 1981 video for the hit song "Physical", which lavished camera time on male models working out in string bikinis who spurn her advances, ultimately pairing off to walk to the men's locker rooms holding hands, though the network ended the clip before the overt homosexual "reveal" ending in some airings

Modern Music Videos.
The website iFilm, which hosted short videos, including music videos, launched in 1997. Napster, a file sharing service which ran between 1999 and 2001, enabled users to share video files, including those for music videos. By the mid-2000s, MTV and many of its sister channels had largely abandoned showing music videos in favor of reality television shows, which were more popular with its audiences, and which MTV had itself helped to pioneer with the show The Real World, which premiered in 1992.

2005 saw the release of the website YouTube, which made the viewing of online video faster and easier; MySpace's video functionality, which uses similar technology, launched in 2007. Such websites had a profound effect on the viewing of music videos; some artists began to see success as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely online. The band OK Go may exemplify this trend, having achieved fame through the videos for two of their songs, "A Million Ways" in 2005 and "Here It Goes Again" in 2006, both of which first became well-known online. Artists like Soulja Boy Tell 'Em and Marié Digby also achieved some level of fame initially through videos released only online.