In 1894, sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired electrician George Thomas and various performers to promote sales of their song 'The Little Lost Child'. Using a magic lantern (an image projector) George Thomas projected a series of still images on a screen simultaneous to live performances. This would become a popular form of entertainment known as the illustrated song, this was the first step towards music videos.

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In 1926, with the arrival of 'talkies' many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts (a sound system that was produced by Warner Bros) featured many bands, singers and dancers. In the early 1930's cartoons were featuring popular musicians performing their hit songs on camera in live-action segments throughout the videos. Live action musical shorts featuring popular performers like Cab Calloway were distributed to theaters. 

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Soundies were produced and released from 1940 to 1947. They were musical films that often included short dance sequences similar to later music videos.

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Musical films had another important feature in the making of music videos. Several musical videos have imitated the classic style of Hollywood musicals from the 1930's to 1950's, for example, Madonna's 1985 Material Girl which was closely followed by Jack Cole's staging of 'Diamonds are a girls best friend'. Michael Jackson was another popular influence in the making of music videos and his music videos 'Thriller' and 'Bad' illustrated the influence of dance sequences in classic Hollywood musicals. These two videos were influenced by the style dance 'fights' in the film version of West Side Song.

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In the early 1950's Tony Bennett claims to have created the first music video when he was filmed walking in Hyde Park, London in 1956, this music video was used in the song 'Stranger in paradise'. The oldest example of a promotional music video with similarities to more modern videos is the Czech video 'Dame si do bytu (let's go to the apartment)' made in 1958.

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In 1961, The Beatles released their first feature film, 'A Hard Day's Night' which was directed by Richard Lester. It was shot in black and white and presented as a mockumentary, it included comedy and dialogue sequences and musical tones. The Beatles' second video was of 'Help!' (1965) and it was filmed in colour in London and in international locations. The title sequence was filmed in black and white and was a good example of the modern performance style music video. In 1965, they also began to create promotional videos for distribution and broadcast in other countries (mainly the US).

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In late 1972-1973 David Bowie was in a series of promotional films directed by pop photographer Mick Rock, he worked extensively with Bowie in this period. Mick Rock directed and edited four videos to promote four of David Bowie's singles, 'John I'm only dancing', 'The Jean Genie', 'Space Oddity' and 'Life on Mars?'.

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Country music also picked up the trend of promotional videos to go along with songs. Sam Lovullo, the producer of the television series 'Hee Haw', said that his shows showed what were in reality the first music videos.

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In 1975, the rock band Queen hired Bruce Gowers to make a promotional video to show their new single 'Bohemion Rhapsody' on the BBC music series Top of the Pops. Rolling Stone has said that Bohemion Rhapsody's influence cannot be overstated, practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on air. In 1980, David Bowie's music video of 'Ashes to Ashes' became the most expensive ever made, having a production cost of $582,000. The video was made in solarised colour with black and white scenes.  

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In 1981, the US video channel MTV launched with the airing of 'Video Killed the Radio Star' and it began an era of 24 hour a day music on television. Two main innovations in the development of the music videos were the development of relatively cheap and easy to use video recording and editing equipment and the development of visual effects created with techniques such as image compositing.

David Bowie's 'China Girl' and 'Let's Dance' (1983) explored race issues and these two music videos began a chain which meant many more artists starting to explore social and political themed music videos.

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In 1983, we saw the most influential and iconic music video of all time was released; Thriller by Michael Jackson. This video broke David Bowie's previous record of $582,000 having cost $800,000 to film. Jackson's success was a break through for African-American artists to get onto MTV.

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In 1985, MTV launched the channel VH1 featuring calmer music and attracting a more older audience than MTV. MTV Europe was launched in 1987 and MTV Asia in 1991. In 1988, the MTV show Yo! MTV Raps debuted, the show allowed hip hop music to be shown to a mass audience for the first time.

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In 1997, we saw the website iFilm, which included short videos including music video. In 2005, we saw the launch of YouTube, which made viewing online videos much faster and easier, Google and Yahoo! Videos, Facebook and MySpace were also using similar technology in order to show music videos. With YouTube being launched it allowed people to instantly see the videos straight away after the had been uploaded, this was shown when in 2009, 'Kings and Queens' music video was uploaded and on the same day of release it earned over one hundred million viewers.

 

Nowadays, YouTube allows people to create advertisements and earn money from people watching the adverts at the start of the video or during the video. A big music video channel on YouTube is called 'Vevo' and this is where many artists upload their music videos and allow people to watch them for free.