Purpose of Music Videos

The music industry has come a long way in the past hundred years with music videos being significant to the popularity of music these days also bring the media industry in and collaborating with artists to make music videos. In 1941 an invention of a jukebox that plays videos along with music was the start of music videos. Throughout the years it has progressed to what we have today with music TV channels such as MTV and also using the internet to spread the video with Vevo that uses YouTube to allow mass viewing from all around the world. This essay is to show the different types of music videos and what goes into the process along with why certain videos have promotion and some don't.

When making a music video the main goal is to promote the artist and their music, the video needs to represent the song and show the artist to who they are or want to be. The music video needs to show clearly who the artist is and gather new fans or entertain existing fans, the best way to promote them is by putting their name in the video so the viewer has no doubt on who it is. The example I have chosen is a song by The Chainsmokers with their music video for closer. At the beginning of their video a title shows up with their name showing clearly that they are the creators of this song and allows new fans to look them up. Also in music videos the director can choose to feature their name somewhere in the video and can be done in different ways. The director isn’t always featured and would normally go unknown from the general viewer. The example I have found is from Michael Jackson's bad which is directed by Martin Scorsese who is an already famous movie director and as Michael Jackson was so big he had long expensive short films to go alongside the music. As it was directed by a big movie director his name was featured at the start with his name flashing up.

When making a music video the producer has a huge part in deciding on what can be in the video or not and have certain producer strategies that they use. If the artist is part of a major label they are unlikely to have much control on what happens in the music video. The artist may have an image that them must keep to so big pop-stars wouldn't be able to feature drugs or sex as it wouldn't keep to their image. on the other hand, you would be able to have a bigger production, including more promotion and other famous people featuring in the video, such George Ezra's listen to the man featuring actor Sir Ian McKellen. Independent band and self-produced artist would have more freedom and be able to make their video be what they want however they would have less production budget and wouldn't be able to go to the same levels that major labels can go to. An example of self-produced artist would be Justin Bieber before he was picked up by his label and was uploading videos to YouTube of himself singing and playing guitar and this was how he was found. Music videos could also be made in the name of art making strange artistic and experimental videos to express the artist.

When an artist releases a song and music video the aim is to make money and through many different services will make the artist money. The artist would get paid the more the video in featured such as on TV channels and radio stations and only big artists would be featured on these platforms as the stations and channels would only take the safe bet by playing popular artists otherwise the viewer wouldn't continue to watch/listen. An artist can also get income from services such as YouTube and Spotify, also could be bought from online stores such as ITunes. Artist have many ways to make money and having a good music video would add interest to the song.


        

These days there are various media outlets to view music videos and because devices like mobile phones could be used to view video anywhere at any time unlike in the past when the only way to view media is through the TV. There are still TV channels dedicated to showing music videos but they are not as popular as they used to be as there are easier ways to view them. The ITunes store allows people to find and buy any music video they wish to then watch at any time. Mainly people view music videos through YouTube and the service Vevo Which has every big artist being presented and uploaded to the internet for everyone to watch, artist also get money from the views on their videos.

There is also synergy in
music videos which is the promotion of something using a music video and can span lots of different medias such as video game, movies or merchandise. A good example of this is Disney who when releasing a movie normally would release such things as music videos and merchandise and would use these things to promote their new movie. The hope for synergy is to use different marketing to make as much income as you can and a good example of this is the movie High School Musical which when the movie was released the songs were put on YouTube and many different types of merchandise were sold such as school bags, clothes, CD 's, party bags, card games and many other items. This could also just be made when a movie needs a song for the soundtrack and artist could make a song and music video in the same style as the movie maybe using footage from the movie and this helps everyone as the artist will get paid and the movie gets promotion if the song becomes popular. An a example of this is wiz kalfia's see you again which was the song for fast and furious 6 and was also a tribute song to Paul Walker who died during the filming period and as it was a tribute to Paul got very popular also giving the movie lots of publicity.



Music videos are popular as they are a interesting visual to go along with the music being played and can also be done in many different ways making many music videos unique. Unlike other media products music videos do not have to follow any rules giving the creator freedom to make whatever they want. When music videos were introduced artist discovered that having a video along side gave their audience something extra to see from them and it caught on up to today were it is almost unheard of for big artist not to have a music video along with there songs. The future of music videos is unclear however in my opinion I feel that music videos will stick around as long as music is still being created and cant see them stopping anytime soon. I feel that music videos will only progress as better technology is developed.