History of Music Promo's

For 50 years music promos have been used as a key tool for bands to promote both themselves and their songs. Through out this time however, the way they have been able to do this has changed greatly and the skills and technology used to create them have come a long way, this has lead to them becoming a major part of the music industry. 

Going back to 1964 The Beatles 'A Hard Day's Night' is widely regarded as the 'first music video' And it features small snipers from the entire album. This was seen as something never before done and the first of its kind. It made the audience aware of the band and their talents and used a lot of branding to. As well as this it also offered the viewer a sort of 'try before you buy' experience because they could hear parts of each song with out having to spend a lot of money on the whole album. 

In 1965 Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' was brought out, it was originally was created to be played on a jukebox, but ended up being a full music promo. This promo was different from ones before it, such as The Beatles because instead of using fast cuts and lots of shots this music promo was far simpler and just used one continual shot and no editing. 

The TV program 'Top of the Pops' ran from 1964 through to 2002 and created a need for music promos. This is because when bands were unable to perform live producers could simply show the music promo instead. Typical conventions were still used in the filming and editing of the show, for instance when bands were performing live cuts to the audience were often used to show what a good time everyone was having and a lot of close ups of the band were used as well as a lot of focus on them and their equipment. These shots and edits would have been conventional for a music promo.  


Looking again at The Beetles, they yet again changed the way music promos were used. Instead of heavily focusing on promoting the band they instead chose to take a more alternative and artistic route. This lead to the use of distorted images, slow motion editing, backwards editing and the use of colour to create a psychedelic feel, which matched up to the phase of drugs and LSD that they band were going through. The video seemed very surreal and artistic and hardly showed the band to be performing. 

In 1967, America created a constructed band called 'The Monkees' This was their answer to The Beetles. This band was a fun and silly band who's music promos clearly reflected this. We can see evidence of this is their music promo 'A Little Bit me, A Little Bit You' This promo was described as 'Wacky comedy' and featured no performance, just the band members messing around and being 'amusing.' Their band member, Mike Nesmith later went on to come up with the idea for MTV.

On of the most famous and hugely significant music promo is 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen in 1975. This was seen as a serious and full length music video and used simple editing to both advertise the band and show off their skills and talents. The video mainly uses cuts and fades and cut to the tempo of the music. Again, brand image was a large part of its need and creation. 

Similarly to 'Strawberry Fields Forever' David Bowies 'Ashes to Ashes' music promo from 1980 marked the start of a new 'romantic movement' era and resulted in a very strange and artistic promo. Throughout this promo there is a very unclear theme used or followed (if any) but does however show him performing. The video was commended on its use of special effects and lighting.

In 1980 Devo's 'Whip It' was the first heavy narrative based music promo. A lot of work was put into it to deliver a strong narrative to run along side the performance aspect of the promo the narrative was portrayed well through simple editing and effects. 

Finally, in 1981 Mike Nesmith came up with the idea of a TV channel devoted solely to showing music promos 24 hours a day. This idea was so good because it would have been very 'cheap telly' as there wasn't a need for a presenter or stage setting and all that would have been needed to do was organising what music promos would be shown when. This was an easy task because of course bands wanted their promos to be widely available to audiences all around the world! 


Durran Durran's 'Rio' in 1983 was the first promo to spend loads of money on their promo, £1m! This is because the music promo was very much a movie style video, using exotic locations and many characters and props. The setting was mainly a Caribbean beach and yacht with lots of attractive women. They also go with the 'comedy sells' theme like The Monkees. 

'Thriller' by Michael Jackson released in 1983 was the first ever music video to feature an intro before the actual promo began. This made the video extremely long and also gave a pre story into the video. The whole video is based on performance and narrative together as Jackson moves the narrative through using singing and dance breaks. This music video was seen as very scary when it first came out due to its excellent make-up, costume, setting and narrative. At the end of this very long promo a stream of credits is used which again was a first for a music promo. 

A break through in 'black and white' music was first seen in 1986 when Run DMC and Aerosmith did a collaboration together for 'Walk this way' This promo was so unique because it was the first time that these two types of music were brought together. This break through in music meant that rap music was now seen as a more acceptable form of music to be shown on MTV. It cleverly uses juxtaposition of the two bands to emphasis their talents and to advertise themselves equally to their audience.

In 1989 Madonna projected her megastardom even further with the use of her controversial music video 'Like a prayer' featuring her kissing and worshipping a 'Black Jesus' this religious imagery caused a lot of controversy and got people taking about her and the video. Besides from this the promo was very conventional  with the use of narrative and performance to entertain and advertise herself and talents.