The purpose of music videos

Music Videos began as simple clips that were paired with songs during the early 40’s, which then evolved into music centred films where the songs were a large part of the plot. Over the next few decades, they started to be short recordings that were made to promote the artists. It wasn’t until 1975 when Queen released the video for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, which was seen as a ground breaking event, that music videos became a mainstream thing for performers to create. This essay will focus on how this happened and why music videos are now so popular.

The opening shot of Bohemian Rhapsody

A main reason why music videos became such a success is that they are a way to promote artists and directors. They’re a way to show off the style of the performers, allowing for more creativity and chances for them to reiterate the point of the song. For directors, it allows them to provide their service and allow people to see their skill. Many music videos of the same genre are directed by the same people, as an artist will see a music video they particularly like and will want to hire them. It’s also likely that an artist will collaborate on multiple projects with the same director, such as Hannah Lux Davis who directed a large amount of videos for Nicki Minaj and Arianna Grande, such as the video for 'Bang Bang'. Also, because a majority of music videos are uploaded to websites like YouTube, the song gets a lot more publicity. They are free to view so people who may not have certain albums can still listen to the song whilst still supporting the artist.

Nicki Minaj in 'Bang Bang'- A collaboration with Jessie J and Arianna Grande

Hannah Lux Davis- Music Video Director

Each of these videos has a producer behind them, some artists may have one that works on every song and other producers may just do singular projects. They are in charge of marketing the song and singer. All producers have different strategies, as they may want to give a specific image to the performer. Some artists, such as David Bowie, who had lots of different styles and personas in their music used videos to show their looks, and use it as an easy way to introduce their new style to fans.

When a song by an artist is played on an outlet such as a radio station, they are, in theory, paid royalties. This is achieved by the station estimating how popular the song is and paying accordingly. This is why mainstream artists receive more money, because their songs are played more often on large outlets. This means that independent and obscure artists will find it difficult to earn money in this way, so alternative outlets have been created. These royalties are also given in regards to how many people are watching music videos, so if there are other outlets for people to view them on, such as the internet or music channels on television, they will earn more money overall.

There are many ways of watching videos that exist, some that have existed since the 70’s and some that are very recent. Websites such as Facebook and Twitter allow for videos to be shared between people.  There are also specific apps and ‘add ons’ that people create for videos. For example, Taylor Swift’s ‘Blank Space’ was released alongside a game where you can explore the entirety of the set to discover facts and follow the two characters.

Synergistic Marketing is when a large company gives rights for their ideas to smaller companies, so that they can use them in their own products. This means that the smaller company’s products are more likely to sell due to brand recognition and the larger company gets more publicity and income. An example of this is Disney, which allows people to put their characters and lyrics onto clothing and food products.  This was very prevalent around the release of Frozen and the Avengers.

Music videos, as a whole, have become popular because they provide benefits to everyone involved. It is a separate media outlet that allows the same content to be present in a new and exciting way that will affect everyone. Fans are able to see more content from their favourite artists, directors are able to tell a story through their creativity, while artists and Producers gain more publicity and money from music video views.