The close relationship between music tracks and visual material can be traced back to the 1930s, with Oscar Fishingers visual interpretations to music, such as his work on the Disney film, Fantasia (1939). Many of his films were made on a contract with Electrola disks, with the end title advertising at the end of the music suggesting the audience could "Get it at your local record store".In the early days of sound film-making, short films were made to showcase an artist. Films up to eight minutes long were played in cinema screenings as part of a newsreel, cartoon and main feature, to show the talents of singers such as Billie Holiday and Bing Crosby.
Another origin of the music video was musical feature films such as The Jazz Singer (1927) through to musicals of the 1940s, and rock and roll movies such as The Girl Can't Help It (1956). These all helped to influence the style of music video, and it became common for music video directors to quote moments from Hollywood in their videos. Documentary became a common form for the visualisation of pop music in the 60s, with sequences such as Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues (1967). The band The USA band The Monkees used surrealism, jump cuts, wacky comedy and lots of action together with performance by the band in their music promos and these elements became very popular to use in music videos.
TV coverage of pop music attempted to capture the new teen audience from American Bandstand in the USA in the 1950s through to the UK's Top of the Pops in the 1960's. The need to have music acts on television every week (particularly chart based shows) led to the creation of short promo films that were sometimes used instead of a studio appearance when the acts were unavailable to perform. The Beatles made films for Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever, and other major British acts of the 60s such as the Who, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones also recorded pop promos.In America, AOR (Adult orientated rock) was dominating the radio and making it harder for pop singles to break through. Meanwhile, cable television was growing, but hadn't yet generated sufficient income to pay for its own programming. A combination of these factors meant that it was now the right time for music television - filling an entire network with music video. The concept became attractive to advertisers making it potentially very profitable, and the only cost to the channel was royalties for airplay. MTV (music television) started broadcasting via satellite feed in 1981. At first there was not enough contemporary material to fill the schedule but the New Wave of British pop acts with their singles based music soon filled the space. They often had video airplay well in advance of radio play and took advantage of the first years of MTV's existence to break the American market.
The growth of MTV in the USA was rapid. American artists soon realised the potential of the medium and followed the British invasion with pop promo clips of their own. Pop promos themselves began to propel some acts to stardom, in come cases bypassing the traditional route of live performance. This was shown by Madonna, whose videos have always been innovative and high profile. The emphisis on image, performance, choreography and the use of the close up have been especially helpful to the success of female acts.The music promo video had been established as a key factor for artist promotion, and by the end of the 1980s it was a prerequisite in the promotion of singles. With the development of the internet came websites for sharing videos such as the massively popular Youtube, where millions of music promos have been shared and watched which helped to boost thousands of artists popularity.
