The Purpose of Music Videos

Music videos first came about during the 1940's when jukeboxes start to display small unrelated clips of people dancing. Later on in the 20th Century these videos were made deliberate by recording the artist(s) on film and making a specific video to go along with the track. This form of media has become more and more popular throughout the years and are now more or less a must in popular music.

Music videos are one of many ways that you can promote a band/ artist but I believe it's one of the most effective ways to do so. If a song has a video, then you are more likely to watch is as if the video is good then they may like the song too. Also as YouTube is one of the biggest sites on the internet, anyone who uses it will most likely see the video. But this would be potentially unfortunate for any smaller bands as the general public will watch videos of songs that are in the charts so this may not be the best way to promote themselves. This form of promotion would also be beneficial to the producer as they will be credited for their work. The band/ artist could also use this form of media to promote a new album, tour or merchandise.

Producers who make videos for mainstream high-end artists have a very different job to ones who produce for smaller artists. Mainstream producers tend to have the artist at the forefront of the video and promote them as a person/ people. This leaves the video open entirely to interpretation and can be completely unrelated to the song if this is what the artist wants from the video. But it’s polar opposite for smaller artists as their videos tend to focus on the actual song to make people listen to it more. It’s definitely harder for smaller artists as they have to go with what the producer wants to do as well because if it’s a higher up artist then they will employ the producers to make videos for them.

As this has become a large form of media, the music video will produce a lot of income for artist no matter the fan base. Also if the video is uploaded on YouTube the band will be paid by them for the views the video gets. Not only will uploading it to YouTube get it a lot of views but will also increase the market for that person’s music as YouTube is one of the most used websites in the world as so many people will use it daily. Also, if the band/artist has a Facebook or Twitter page, they could upload it there. This will mean that people can share the video, again, extending the market.

When you combine all of these, the artist’s video will have a good chance at success especially with social media as that is one of the biggest enterprises to be in in this day and age. Also even if the band/artist isn’t very big they can do a lot to expand their fan base just by making decent music videos. And if a song has a video that you like you will be more inclined to listen to more of their music if it is to your personal taste.

I feel that music videos are a great form of media as it means that the artists can express through the video what the song is about and in some cases, are completely irrelevant to the song.I also believe it to be one of the most popular of media forms as songs such as ‘Hello’ by Adele have over 1 billion views, which is phenomenal. But if you go back about 20 years then music videos weren’t anywhere near as big as they are now and this is entirely due to the invention of the Internet. Before that they were only on TV and in Jukeboxes, which were still kicking around. But again, all thanks goes to the invention of computers and the Internet.