The first music posters as such were hand-drawn or hand-written handbills posted to advertise a local performance. The invention of the printing press changed advertising as much as it did literature. As commercial printing presses grew more sophisticated, so did the popularity of the printed advertisement. However, these printed advertisements were limited to text and crude art.
The advent of lithography in the late 18th century brought art and graphic arts to a much wider audience. Artists and commercial printers alike were able to reproduce works of art and advertisements in color. Lithography changed the art world and the advertising world by allowing images to travel in ways they never had before---in books, prints and posters.
By the Victorian era, lithography was an advertising staple and was often used to create posters that promoted popular entertainment. The popularity of musical entertainments during this period meant that music posters were among the most common of advertising posters.
During the late Victorian era, the emergence of the Belle Epoque brought an emphasis on art and beauty to even the mundane. Thus, the era of the artistic poster was born, and the first great era of the music poster was born, as well.
French artist Jules Cheret is credited with popularizing the use of serious art and serious artists in poster advertising. Cheret not only perfected lithography techniques, but during the 1880s, he began to take commissions to create art especially for advertising posters. Soon, other serious artists---including Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard---began to take advertising commissions, as well.
As the Belle Epoque era waned to the Art Nouveau era, artists such as Alphonse Mucha began to take up Cheret's cause and create beautiful, artistic entertainment posters.
The Art Nouveau era was pushed aside by the Art Deco era, but music posters were pushed aside by two even more lasting contributions to the 20th century---the movies and radio.
As the popularity of film and radio, and later television, increased, the use of posters to advertise music and other entertainments aside from film declined. Music performances declined in popularity with the advent of radio; when a live performer did come to town, shows were often promoted on the radio.
Movies also played a part in the decline of music posters during this time. After the invention of the sound film, some of the most popular short film subjects were musical acts.
While posters were still created during this time, they were often handbills, or even marquees, which could not be preserved.
With the counter-culture movement of the 1960s came a new emphasis on the poster as advertisement. At no other time in history has the poster been used so effectively to advertise music.
While pop music had been around for at least a decade and had made major inroads into television and radio, bands just getting their start often had to rely on word of mouth and print advertisement for exposure. Artists such as Peter Max, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley and others created music posters that would come to define the art of the decade.
Taking cues from both the Andy Warhol-influenced pop art of the day and the Belle Epoque and Art Nouveau poster styles, the music posters of the 1960s blended both art and text in psychedelic posters that reflected the changing times.
As the counter-culture of the 1960s became the popular culture of the 1970s, radio and television embraced the bands and the types of music that had once been considered underground. As a result, music posters once again faded as a primary form of advertisement.
The punk and hardcore scenes that emerged in the late 1970s abandoned the art of the 1960s, embracing a DIY attitude. Music posters re-emerged, but in the punk era, they took the form of photocopied handbills.
The music poster's decline continued in the 1980s, as MTV and other television stations became the primary way for bands to promote themselves. In the late 1990s and 2000s, the Internet dealt the music poster its final blow.
While music posters can still be found adorning college dorm walls, they are no longer the artistic form that they once were. Music artists no longer need posters to promote themselves, and, as a result, the modern music poster is more likely to be a blown-up photograph of the artist rather than an artist's rendering.