Purpose of music videos

Music videos serve many purposes, for promotion, to increase income, to get people to recognize the song easier amongst other things.

Over the years music videos have evolved highly from the ground breaking videos of the 60s to todays high-tech blockbuster style videos. Music videos were first created to give bands a break from touring, bands like the Beatles had to constantly tour around the world due to their high acclaim, and with the advance in technology of the television they saw it as an opportunity to appear around the world without having to travel. An example of this is "Strawberry Fields" which is a very simple video, it was aired around the world and the Beatles popularity increased without them having to leave their homes.These short film style videos sparked a revoulution and more and more people began creating them which led in to the 70s with performers like David Bowie, Queen and many more creating videos to be shown around the world for their music and as their wasn't a huge amount of artists creating these they could gain more recognition and airtime. But it was to evolve more in the 80s when the channel MTV was launched in 1981 which brought music in to a whole new era. At first there wasn't many videos to air, other than British acts like 'The Cure' and others which created huge exposure for the British music scene with their songs being heard globally. But artists began to realise that the best way to gain acknowledgment was to get their music shown on MTV. Music videos then began to be more complex and cinematic with Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' as a prime example, it was a 14 minute mind blowing piece with use of movie style make-up and Mj's trademark dance scenes, it was even given a premiere on TV after watershed and millions tuned in to watch it; this was the epitamy of the music video revolution. From then on they have become a must have for any artist to be known, they have become pivotal in an artists success.

Promotion is main factor in music videos. Promotion is needed to boost an artists popularity or even make an artist become known. And since the revolution of the music video business it has become one of the best ways for promotional uses. But for different levels of artist you need different styles of promotion. If you are a well established artist then you will have the help of your record label to put out your work like sending your latest video to the music channels on TV which is global exposure, also it can be posted on the internet on sites like YouTube. If you are an unknown artist or just starting to gain exposure then the internet is probably the best way because you can post your video on to a website for free and through word of mouth your video could be viewed throughout the world. As well as this there are sites like MySpace where you can have your music on your page and many now famous artists came through this route such as Lily Allen and Kate Nash to name a few. Also it can be used for promoting someone’s album, if an album is close to release and artist usually releases their best track like a teaser with a music video which makes people want to go out and buy the single or the album. An alternate style of this promotion is for films, if an artist has their song as a part of a movie soundtrack they will usually make a video which has clips from or is related to the movie and this not only promotes the artist but also the film, a great example of this would be the Brian Adams song "Everything I Do" from the Robin Hood film which contained clips from the film so everyone would associate the song with Robin Hood. (unfortunatly embedding is disabled for this video)

Another use of the music videos is for artists to regain money which they have lost during the production. Music videos can cost a serious amount of money, with one of the most expensive videos of all time costing over 7 million dollars so artists need to recieve money back from this. They can do this by getting their video played on TV channels which they will receive royalty payments for each time their video is played. And their videos being on such websites as YouTube and hundreds of other websites gets the music more known leading to more sales, finally resulting in more money. Usually an artist will release their most expensive, most extravagant video as their first release to create hype about their album; but a very famous example would be Michael Jackson's thriller which is probably the most well known video of all time. He had released previous videos before this with high success but he then made the 14 minute movie style piece that blew away audiences, it shot the album straight back to number 1 and gained Jackson even higher acclaim.

Music videos can be a great boost for an artists profile as well, if the artist isn’t the most known and they bring out a video that people love it instantly makes that artist more popular and through word of mouth their work spreads. In this modern era it is much easier to become recognized than earlier generations due to the advances in technology. Nowadays anyone can buy a microphone, download a recording programme on their computer and record a song, 5 minutes later they can post it on the internet and potentially have their song heard worldwide. With sites like MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and many more you can share your music with the world. And this is all free promotion which is an artists dream. And even if the artist is highly known a good music video can make them become more liked than already.

But the most clear purpose from an audiences view is to entertain, whether strange, funny, amazing or even rubbish these videos are meant to entertain the viewers. And with the ease that the public can access videos now an artist needs to make a video to keep up with the competition and keep noticed. Because at the end of the day people make music for the world to hear, so if you make a music video that appeals to your target audience then you can progress as a musician.