Purpose of the music video - 1000 word essay

Music has been around for a very long time, however music videos have only been around for a little amount of time. The first music video was produced and released in 1975. Queen made their song Bohemian Rhapsody. Throughout the years music videos have developed greatly. Music videos are important because they make people remember the song. For example: when someone sees something that is in the video and it reminds them of the song. In this essay I am going to be talking about the importance and purpose of music videos, and writing about my understanding of the functions of music videos.

One of the main reasons why music videos are popular is because they have great promotion value, both for the artists and their song, but also for the directors as well. In a lot of music videos you will usually see the director’s names either at the start of the music video or at the end of the music video. A form of promotion that artists/bands do in their music videos is put the name of their band somewhere within the music video. For example: The Beatles have their band name all over their music video. The band name is on the drums. Directors can also be promoted by their certain styles, Michel Gondry is famous for many different music videos, like Daft Punk’s Around the World. In this video, each group of dancers are dancing in time to a different instrument or beat in the song.
Producers of music videos have many different ways and strategies on how they market the artists/bands. Each of Michel Gondry's style of music videos are known for being very strange and unique. This is clearly shown in this video.

A way that producers market the artists and bands is what appears in their music videos. For example, there are many music videos that have a lack of clothing, lots of sexualisation and alcohol. These type of videos come from very major label bands and artists. Independent bands and artists don’t always have the money/funding to make such large scale videos, so they usually result to making videos that attract attention because of something really cool they may have done in their video. Self-produced artists and bands will usually try to start their careers on YouTube or Facebook or any other social media websites. Artists such as Justin Bieber started his music career on Facebook. And Poppy started her music career by showing off her artistic side on YouTube. Finally, many artists and bands also make artistic music videos because they want to be remembered by a visual masterpiece. Daft Punk released an album called Discovery, this in my opinion is artistic because every music video is completely animated. Here are a few pros and cons of being a self-produced artists. A few of the pros include: you get to keep any rights and royalties to your music that you create. All money that you make will all be sent to you and no one else will take a share of it. And a couple of cons include: you may not have any contacts so it may be difficult to get your music out into the world and to also get yourself signed to a label. It is also a full time job so you have to be prepared to dedicate most of your time towards it.

Every time an artist’s or band’s record is played on TV, radio or anywhere else people are able to watch it, they should receive royalties or some form of payment. They will usually get payed so that the publishers can have access to their songs and so they will be allowed to put these videos and song on the internet and TV.  In the past it was very easy for band/artists to get record label income and money for their tracks as whenever you purchase a CD or a record vinyl for example, the money would go to them directly. But because of how everything has changed, directors, producers, anyone involved with a certain video, has to get a slight cut of the money, meaning the band/artist does not get all that they should.

The extension of media outlets throughout the years has changed drastically. YouTube is probably the most popular media outlets to promote bands and artist's music videos. There are also music outlets like TV shows such as Britain's Got Talent and The X Factor. The girl group Little Mix and the singer Olly Murs both made it to the semi finals of The X factor. They did not win the competition, but they did go on to become very famous. There have been a lot of different people who have become famous for singing on YouTube. Sean Mendez is a good example. He started off by doing covers of songs. Then he started to be noticed by lots of people and eventually he has become a very famous singer.

Synergy is a big part of the media industry. Synergy means promoting certain brand through licencing deals, by this I mean that large companies will contact others in hopes that they can promote their products in many different ways. A lot of these ways include through music videos. For example: Avril Lavigne did a song called 'Rock and Roll' for Sony in which they promoted their new phone the Sony Xperia. There is a scene in which the phone is submerged in water to show how the phone is completely waterproof.

In conclusion, I think that music videos are so popular because it gives the band/artist that promotion value. They make them well known to the world and many people watch their videos because they will be posted on the internet. Another reason is that they are very memorable, so if someone sees something that could potentially relate to the video they have just watched, they could also go tell friends about it etc.