Answering the question "How did the music video originate and what is its contemporary purpose?"

Some information seen below is information that can also be seen in my flowchart describing how music videos came about, since the information is the same.

How did the music video originate and what is its contemporary purpose?

The first music video is argued to be “Bohemian Rhapsody” by ‘Queen’, and while this may be true this was not the origin of music video. As before the creation of an actual music video similar productions involving sound and moving picture to accommodate it were used.

In 1894 Edward B. Marks and Joe Stem hired George Thomas and various other performers to promote sales of their song “The Little Lost Child” by using a ‘Magic Lantern’, an early type of image projector developed in the 17^th century, to project a series of still images to accompany live performances of their song. This became a popular form of entertainment known as ‘Illustrated Song’, showing even before actual music videos were born per se, that images were used to accompany music.

From this point on sound, including dialogue, was used to accompany film and live performances. Examples include the ‘phonoscène’, which combined chronophone sound with a chronograph film, show with actors lip-synching to the sound recording, and carrying on from this the official “Talkies” – sound films incorporating synchronised dialogue. Early 1930’s cartoons featuring musicians performing on-camera in live action segments, and in France during the late 1950’s, the invention of the ‘Scopitone’ – a visual jukebox leading to short films being produced to accompany songs (the idea spread to other countries, with similar machines being presented, such as the ‘Color-Sonic’ in the US, and the ‘Cinebox’ in Italy).

Only a few years later, in 1965, popular British band ‘The Beatles’ began creating promotional clips called “filmed inserts”. The purpose of these was so that the group could promote their record releases without having to make actual in-person appearances, allowing their new records to be known and promote the band itself. Soon after this promotional clips became much more important, and were created by well-known artists such as ‘The Rolling Stones’ and ‘The Who’.

Ten years on, and what is considered by many to be the first music video, was born. On the 31^st of October 1975, poplar band ‘Queen’ released a promotional video for their song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. This music video was created in order to promote the band and the song, much like how promotional clips did, only this was a full length video. It's argued that this is what started the entire music video genre, and so this is how music videos originated. But what is their contemporary purpose?

Just as was the focus of the first promotional clip – created by ‘Queen’, it is to promote the song and to promote the artist, often through sex appeal or unique image, take for example Cheryl Cole or Lady Gaga.

Television helped cater to this way of artists further promoting themselves, with the creation of ‘MTV’. ‘MTV’ stands for Music Television, and unlike today where most of what it does is try to get us, the audience, to watch TV-trash such as “16 and Pregnant”, it’s primary focus used to be showing music videos in order to help further promote artists and their music, and with an entire channel originally dedicated to showing music videos constantly, this wasn't hard to do.

Even with ‘MTV’ showing music videos less and less nowadays, it didn't stop other TV channels eventually showing music videos, as now more than ever are there channels dedicated to only playing music videos 24/7 an nothing else, providing constant air time for artists. Although still, the most popular music video platform isn't the television, it's the Internet.

Popular video site ‘YouTube’ plays host to thousands of music videos from multiple huge record labels, such as ‘Warner Music Group’ and ‘Sony BMG Music Entertainment’, as well as music videos from thousands of unknown artists hoping to get recognised for their talent and signed with record labels, such as the case of Justin Bieber. It allows anyone with an Internet connection to view any music video that is uploaded whenever they want, and allows people to share those videos with people, thus creating even more attention around them. Originally popular site ‘MySpace’ was home to artists hoping to get known and promote their music, although now it seems everything music related is uploaded straight to ‘YouTube’, since it offers such ease when finding the exact song or music video someone wants to see at that exact time. It is this that has fuelled the purpose of contemporary music videos; to promote the artist and song, thus increasing awareness and most likely generating profit for the record label.

So as said previously, contemporary music videos’ purpose is to promote the artist and the song, which in contemporary society, thanks to Web 2.0, is easier than ever.

The four images displayed above are a magic lantern (top left), a still from the "Bohemian Rhapsody" music video (top right), the 'MTV' logo (bottom left) and the 'YouTube' logo (bottom right).