History of the Music Promo

The idea of the music promo had not began becoming popular until the 60's, artists began to make short films with little performance, however still putting across their music to an audience without having to perform it live.  


Bob Dylan 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' (1960s)

This video is conventional in the way the artist is shown in the video, however there is no range of shots or performance in this video making it unconventional of a music promo.


One of the key ideas that led to the rise of the music promo were TV music programmes such as 'Top of the Pops' these featured chart based music with with either live or mimed performances, short films were used to fill band absences, this is what started the music promo.

The Beatles ' Strawberry fields forever' also made in the style of a short film, plays the song as well as featuring the band, but still does not have any performance aspect to it. However in this promo compared to Bob Dylan's, a range of different shots and effects have been used. Not much money was spent on this video as the idea of a music promo was not seen as a worthwhile thing.  

The Monkeys, were the first constructed band, it was there music and videos that established some of the main conventions for music promos such as: surrealism, jump cuts, wacky comedy, action plus performance. It was this band that introduced the idea of telling a story for song within the promo.
It was Mike Nesmith from the Monkeys' that came up with the idea for a promo based cable TV programme, this was the beginnings of MTV.

Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' were considered by some to be the first pop promo. They gave it free of charge to the networks. They were one of the first bands to sing along to the song in the music promo, and used a number of different special effects throughout the promo. This promo goes back and forth from the performance and studio based aspects of a music promo.


MTV was established in 1981, and grew rapidly in the US. The potential of this medium was quickly realised by different artists. Early audience demographics led to dominance of white acts/male rock. Whereas now that have expanded to allow a number of different MTV channels that specialise in a variety of different genres of music. MTV at the time tended to ignore a lot of black rap videos, most of these artists didn't have a large budget and tended to have some threatening content. It was Aerosmith and Run DMC 'Walk this Way' that provided a cross over and broke the white dominance on MTV. by 1983 MTV was firmly established as a key channel for the music industry. The company produced its own Oscars for music promos. As more music TV channels started appearing, MTV became more of a lifestyle orientated channel, and covered popular culture in television- e.g. film, music, tv ect. In the 1980s artists realised the effectiveness of a music promo and production budgets soared. Duran Duran 'Wild Boys' spent $1 million on their music promo.

Michael Jackson 'Thriller' was an influential music promo, it was directed by a film director, and cost him a small fortune, the promo itself starts as a movie, and its not until around half way through that the music and performance aspect of the video begins. This promo however was effective in boosting Michael Jackson's popularity around the world.


The present


Compared to then, there are now a much larger range of music channels that show a range of different genres, as well as these channels music promo can now be shown in a number of different places, showing convergence between different mediums such as the Internet.