The Purpose Of Music Videos

In this essay I will cover the rise of music videos and how they solidified themselves as a part of modern music culture. Music videos were always set to exist from the days of cabaret and Broadway as an audience we have always enjoyed adding a visual element to an otherwise entirely audio based medium. All it took was the advancement in technology to begin producing music videos to allow for artists, directors and producers alike to create a visual spectacle to accompany the music; and as music and video kept on growing it was a natural evolution that the two would eventually be merged.

As I mentioned earlier music videos can be used by producers and directors and not just the artist. For example, it’s important to most producers to create a certain image or style for the band that they manage, most of this is done through the music but a well-made video can completely alter or enforce the bands image such as giving the band a bad boy image e.g. The Rolling Stones (below) 

Or repeatedly using an identifiable symbol or logo to give the band marketability. Directors also benefit from creating a music video as it can be used as a quick and fairly cheap method of displaying their directorial talents e.g. Edgar Wright’s music video for ‘Blue Song – Mint Royale’ (below).

It is important to a producer to ensure that their band/artist is marketed in the right way, an effectively marketed band/artist can double the sales of their music. For example, the band One Direction are heavily marketed towards teenage girls as the‘perfect boy band’ with a lot of their merchandise being covered in the members faces rather than the band’s name/logo while it may sound sexist, sex appeal goes a very long way in the music industry and is frequently used for males and females alike. And the teenage market is especially susceptible to sex appeal which is part of bands like One Directions huge success, and producers know this, any band that can find a following in the mainstream teenage market will almost definitely be successful due to the size and dedication of that audience    



Music videos can be, and often are, used as an additional source of income for the artists and higher ups. As technology evolved it became easier for music videos to be seen by as many people as possible, starting of course with popular channels like MTV audiences warmed up to the idea of music videos and of course producers capitalized on this idea and began to make them more widely available thorough sites such as Vimeo, YouTube, Vevo etc. to the point that a music video can be more popular than the song itself which still gives the producers and artists money.   

Music videos have seen a huge increase in traffic to video sharing sites such as YouTube and Vevo, YouTube especially has benefited from the influx of popularity of music videos with the site having a section dedicated to music videos with videos from popular artists getting millions of views creating a  relationship between artists and YouTube, by bringing traffic to the website and a bigger following to the artist. The biggest example of a music video that exploded in popularity is PSY's 'Gangnam Style' which is currently sitting at 2,541,958,010 views 

This music video quickly became a viral hit bringing huge amounts of users onto YouTube to watch, mimic, parody, and homage the video and helped sky-rocket PSY's career. 

In the media industry particularly large and influential companies will at some point focus on synergy for their product/service. Synergy is simply extending your companies product to various other areas of production and media. For example, the game Angry Birds have a huge range of products with the Angry Birds branding, such as Angry Birds: Jenga, Transformers, chewing gum, Lego, figures and plushes etc. Synergy helps both companies involved reinforcing the angry birds brand more as well as using the brand to sell more of the other companies products all in all helping both sides make money. Synergy is also used in the music industry, for example the aforementioned One Direction have a huge range of products with the bands likeness and/or logo on them including; party equipment, blankets, cardboard cut outs, slippers, make up, headphones, body lotion, lampshades etc. This just goes to show how far a bands influence can go with synergistic marketing like this it ensures that both the artists/producers and the companies that make these branded products continue to make money.  

Referring to my initial statement music videos were only a natural evolution, we as an audience enjoy visual and audio stimulation and combining the two was an excellent and immensely profitable idea and it's no surprise that they gained popularity so quickly and still continue to grow to this day. Audiences love to see a visual representation of how the music makes them feel or to show the story that the lyrics were trying to tell and music videos allowed for creators to make something amazing, take Michael Jackson's thriller as an example it's one of the most popular music videos ever made and even if you don't know the video you know the dance, music videos like this helped to immortalize the song. It's not just big artists that benefit from the popularity of music videos, smaller independent artists can gain a following on YouTube if they create a music video which results in exposure to the band. For example the band The Blue Dawns (below) uploaded a few music videos to YouTube which resulted in them gaining a fan base

      

In conclusion it's obvious that music videos are here to stay permanently since as long as there is music being made someone will want to make a music video to go along with it.