Purpose of music video essay

Intro

Since the 1970’s, the medium of music has been dominated by the ever rising takeover of the music video. A music video gives the artist an excuse to promote their music on the television, with visuals matching the tone of the song and providing a story to go along with the lyrics. In this essay, I will be discussing the up rise of this medium, along with new innovations that give the audience more accessibility to their favourite artists. I will also be discussing the marketing and promotion of said artists and why I think they are so popular.

Promotion Of Artist’s

A positive of making a music video is promotion for the artists and the directors, using the band’s name on something like a bass drum will let people know who the band are and then get more of a following through this self-promotion. An example of this would be The Hive’s song ‘Hate To Say I Told You So’, in the video, they printed their band name on to the front of the bass drum, as well as printing the name on the straps of the guitars, it is very subtle but noticeable at the same time.

A director will also promote himself by designing a music video that people will instantly recognise, that is unique, and will get stuck in the viewer’s head, and example of a director is Jack White, he directed the White Stripes song ‘Fell In Love With A Girl’, this video was remembered for being short, and using techniques barely even used back then, he recreated an entire scene using Lego stop motion animation, this made this video unique and made people remember Jack White’s name because of this video, this is the director promoting himself in one of his client’s videos. Another example would be the music video to the Beastie Boys' song 'Sabotage' which was directed by Spike Jonze.

Producers’ Strategies

The majority of music videos and music lyrics nower-days refer to Sex and Sex appeal, Major band labels found that men are more attracted to a music video featuring a young female or male on screen sing provocative lyrics, and example of this would be Britney Spears’ song ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’, I mean, even the title of the song is provocative enough. Another aspect of a music video that people are attracted to is flashy effects, a video with cool stunts and explosions are more likely to grab someone’s attention, like Michael and Janet Jackson’s song ‘Scream’ which is still the most expensive music video in the world. Another example of a music video with flashy effects would be the Gorillaz song, 'Feel Good Inc' Which won the MTv award for visual effects in 2005, it features a contrast of bright and colourful animation with real time footage.
 

With the invention of the World Wide Web and evolving into Web 2.0, the Internet has become a new and fast way of watching music videos on demand; this was an innovation as now fans can watch their favourite band or artist whenever they want. This is also a benefit for Independent artists as it is harder to get their work noticed and it is usually the case big record labels will not even give them a chance, making your video go viral will get you noticed.

Extending Artists And Record Labels Income

One of the main reasons a record label will not give independent artists a chance is because it is like taking a gamble, if the new artist doesn’t sell well then the label is losing money. This is the same for radio stations; they will not play an unpopular song because they will be losing money, they're basically shit scared to tiptoe outside the proverbial box so it becomes a cesspool of the same songs played over and over again every day. The difference between a major record’s and an independent record label is that the budget for the independent label is significantly lower than a major label, and example of a major label music video would be Janet and Michael Jackson’s song scream, which is still the most expensive music video ever made. With websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, it has become easier for independent artists to get the funding needed to make a decent music video, fans of the band will donate small amount to help them get to their target budget and in return, they receive perks for their donations, ranging depending how much they contribute. This has also made it easier for independent artists to get noticed by big labels.

Extension Of Various Media Outlets                           

There are many media outlets that can be implemented into music video, examples of these would be the internet, with websites like YouTube that give an infinite source of music video for audiences to watch for free, TV with channels like MTV and VH1 for all ages. Radio with stations like Kiss Fm and Heart, Movies are another source, the film Skyfall’s theme was accompanied with an official lyric video by singer Adele. Videogames are also a media source, an example would be the game Final Fantasy 13 which had singer Leona Lewis singing all of the songs in the soundtrack, when the Original Sound Track (OST) was released, it was credited to Leona and it was produced as one of her albums.

Synergistic Marketing

Sometimes, a music production company will give permission to another distributor to sell a product with the face of one of their talents on it, if the talent is very popular, then it is likely to sell very well in retail, this is a gamble for manufacturers as they have to decide whether the talent will make them a lot of money. It will benefit the producer greatly if it does succeed because it is giving the talent advertising, making the audience more incline to check out their work. An example of this is the marketing for the band Queen, the record producer paid retail manufacturers to print thier logo on t-shirts mugs and posters to sell to the fans, the pretty much become a walking advertisment for the band. They also use the music in the TV series, Flash Gordon, this went on to be sold as the flash gordon album by Queen.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I feel that music videos have greatly benefitted the listening experience since their premiere over thirty years ago, there will always be ever changing mediums that will continue to help and hinder the viewing experience of music in the late future.