Research: The purpose to music videos

Research: The purpose to music videos

Introduction 

In the music industry music videos have played an extremely big part in the success of many big name artists we see today. Whether it is seen in a bad light with controversy and confusion like Madonna, or a positive public message to the people like the late Michael Jackson they have always been entertaining to watch and never short of imagination and creativity.

What exactly is a music video and what's the purpose of it?

A music video is the visual interpretation to the song that is produced by an artist or musician. It is also another part of the media and music videos synergy as it is another media platform used to go hand in hand with the sound track. The purpose of it is to give the fans and audience a visual entertainment to go along with the song, the video can be used for many things such as:

• Promoting a newly released movie, which will usually include parts of the movie in the video. - Weeknd Earned it (for Fifty Shades of Grey.)  

• It could hold a political message. - George Michael Outside which was a political messaged regarding homosexuality. 

• To increase awareness about either the artist themselves or their upcoming album. - Krept and Konan's freak of the week released to promote their new album The Long Way Home.

 Conventions of a music video

Music videos have many conventions, a lot of them strongly depend on the genre of the song and artist, for example pop songs and there music videos seem to be very fast paced uplifting and energetic and the music videos response to this is fast paced editing bright lighting to make it work with the beat of the song. (Chosen example Rita Ora - Hot Right Now)



Where as if it was a hip-hop song the beat is very low pitched and it has dark lighting only focusing on important conventions and aspects to the genre such as women chains cars and big houses and maybe the rapper/ artist himself. (chosen example 50 Cent ft. Olivia - Candy shop) 

However there are classic conventions that you will see often in most music videos for example usually there is a star performance, which is usually the artist themselves appearing in the music video or there is someone lisping the lyrics of the song in the video. These two are seen as the most relevant as they give the music video a true meaning otherwise the music video wouldn't have much to do with the song which would make the audience lose interest in the video.

Music videos must have a relationship with the other aspects of the music industries synergy to be a success with the fans and to get more coverage:

• Radio (where the soundtrack will get played.)
• TV where the music video itself is presented to a worldwide audience on channels like MTV.(50 cent candy shop on MTV)

• Print media where cover art may be used as promotion for either the single or the whole album/mixtape (The hit single may be noted that it is included in the album.) 
• The film, usually if a soundtrack is made for a movie in particular it will be played at some point in the movie and if not in the credits.

• Internet where the music video can be streamed on the internet whenever viewers want to see it. websites like YouTube can provide this. (As you can see YouTube is being used to stream the music videos on this blog post.)

Impact on the audience

From the early ages of music videos and even more so now there has be a huge demand in music videos from fans. It seems like if an audio soundtrack is released and it is quite popular fans ask for the music video to be released.

Sometimes music videos happen to be a bigger success then the soundtrack itself or it creates more attention than the soundtrack, this has happened many time with both female pop artists Madonna, (Like a prayer) and Rhianna (We Found Love).

Factors threatening the music video industry

With the advancement of technology and time constant threats to end and change the music industry are being made. Applications like Spotify and even iTunes which is building more accounts and a bigger fan base everyday because its  an Apple product and these applications use the soundtrack and exclude the music video. Another problem is censorship on the internet meaning that if a music video is seen as inappropriate then it can be taken off of the internet. Also some amateur artists are getting more coverage for doing their cover to a famous artists song. So now artists such as Justin Timberlake, jay-Z and Beyoncé have gotten behind Tidal, an application where you have to pay monthly subscription to watch the latest music videos, which is causing problems with the relationship between fans and the artists.