History of the Music Video.

The concept of a music video first came to be when artists such as The Beatles made feature length films and included audio over certain parts in the early 1960's. Before this there wasn't really either the technology required to make music videos available, nor the demand for such texts due to the lack of TV accessibility.  The sheer success of bands like The Beatles meant their performances were always in demand by the public. Initially these feature films were to satisfy the demand for an artist by providing accessible footage of the band playing. The idea of promoting a track by producing a video to accompany it wouldn't come around until later.
 One example is 'A Hard Day's Night' wherein a segment of the film depicts the Beatles trying to outrun their raucous fans, which symbolises their need to produce such films. However the majority of early music videos were incredibly simple, for example 'Help' by the Beatles and 'Space Oddity' by David Bowie. Whereas these types of early music video provided gratification for the fans and viewers, by today's standards they're incredibly boring and poorly made.
 For instance, on 'Space Oddity' the cutting of the shots is ill-timed and doesn't fit the beat of the song. There's random zooming of the camera which has no meaning and isn't necessary as well as over saturated red lighting which is of no significance. Any space themed Mise-en-scene created is also cancelled out by the fact that Bowie is sat there with an acoustic guitar.
another example of these simple and primitive videos was Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' which provided a base for many others to be made. A simple concept of showing the lyrics to the song on cards which were dropped in time with when they were sung. The whole video was shot in one go and no editing of video was required. the rise of these artists in particular signified a change in the minds of young people, as these were the first artists to write their own songs, unlike the likes of Elvis Presley who were the first real manufactured pop stars we know and are popular today.
 It was Queen's video for 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in 1975 which was seen as the first video made for promotional purposes and the first to expand the boundaries of what was possible when making a music video.
 As technology advanced and music video production became more and more popular, TV began airing programmes like 'Top of the Pops' and 'The Old Grey Whistle Test', which featured pop artists at the time performing live. This and the introduction of whole TV channels(MTV) devoted to the showing of music videos signified the popularity of videos. It only seems ironic that in 1981 the first video shown on MTV was The Buggles' 'Video Killed the Radio Star'as the video accompanying the song started to become as if not more important than the actual song.
 Throughout the 80's bands began to produce videos which had a narrative to interweave with the performance footage as well as setting the boundaries on video budget higher. Good examples of this are Wham!'s 'Club Tropicana' and Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' which proved whoever spent the most money on their video tended to have the more successful singles.
 Since the evolution of abstract music videos and videos whose visual imagery is derived from the song's lyrics  have become more prominent - (Radiohead; No Surprises and Street Spirit - REM; Losing My Religion respectively.)  These types of video now mean there are 4 major styles of music video - Abstract/Lyrical Interpretation/Performance and Narrative.