Purposes of a music video...

Today in class we got an introduction into the functions of music videos and why they are so important in terms of purpose to the artist and also the audience.

Functions of a music video:

• Appeal to the audience and builds a connection with the fan base
• More familiarity with the artist
• Creates hype
• Seeing a different side to an artist
• Increases popularity of artist which helps to raise their profile
• Promotion purposes
• Confirm the genre
• Publicity purposes
• Show meaning behind the song
• Creates a connection between the artist and an existing or new audience
• Promotion through TV shows which means that the artist doesn't have to do as much- TV is one of the main platforms which helps promote music

One of the main purposes of a music video though is the marketing and advertising aspect of it and ensuring that the video raises the profile of the artist and promotes them and their songs as much as possible along with making money!

During 1950 and 1960 artists such as The Beatles produced short films for the increasingly popular medium which helped to promote albums and songs and this was the time when music videos were created properly. Slightly later on in 1981 MTV was launched in the US and music PR changed forever from then on. MTV became an artist's largest promotional tool of the decade, however because the artist's would be appearing on TV a lot more, looks became a lot more important. Before, it was all about the voice and what you heard, but it soon became about the appearance as well as the music when they were on TV. The audience for MTV during this period were teenagers and young adults because they were the ones that were going to buy albums and pay money to go to their favourite artist's concerts. MTV was ground-breaking, however it still created problems during the generation such as audiences were only exposed to some music genres, there wasn't much variety. This was because only the major artists had the budgets in order to create music videos, therefore the more unknown artists weren't as popular and didn't have as much money to create videos to promote themselves as artists. Success from the videos meant that money was constantly being reinvested back into the artist and so the smaller artists struggled to be promoted and there was a lack of platforms too which meant that these artists weren't able to gain a following from the audience.

YouTube was launched during 2005 and it was the beginning of a tool as powerful if not more so than MTV. It also brought about a lot of changes to music and videos, and allowed free worldwide promotion which meant that artists that weren't quite successful yet had the ability to upload and share their videos and engage with an audience as a result.

In the music industry nowadays, videos are split into three categories: performance, narrative and concept.

                                                Performance based

This is where music videos specialise in featuring the artist of  the song performing live throughout most if not all of the video and usually consists of the closer shot types and more intimate

camerawork to focus on the artist. These types of video can still appeal to an audience even though they are simple.
 

For example Lady Gaga- Edge of glory

Foo fighters- Best of you

 

 Narrative based

These music videos use actors and the artist in an attempt to tell a story through the music video. The story is often linked to the song lyrics but there are still elements of performance in the video.

 

Gwen Stefani- Cool

 

Eminem- Stan

 

Concept based

Creative music videos usually based around a certain concept or idea- they may or may not feature the artist but in some way are unique. Today, this is the most common type of video.

 

Coldplay- The scientist

 

Ok go- Here it goes again