Purpose of a Music Video

Promotional- The purpose of the music video is to promote the video so that people will buy the song, the video will cause a reaction with the audience and people will start talking about it remember the song and people will start to buy it. The promotion of the song and video will be done by not only word of mouth but also by certain channels such as MTV where they show new videos 'future hits'. The music videos give a better understanding of the song to the audience as you often by watching the video understand the meaning of the video more than you did before. The artist has a picture that the song is sold with so you often find that the video is related to and when the customer buys the song you find that the song will be recognised by the picture or the video more than the artists name. The overall purpose of all of these points above is so the artist can promote the record company so that is how they make their money.
Promoting an artist is also a big part of the promotion of songs and music videos as the artist needs to be known for them to make money themselves. If I was to use Psy as an example who wrote the song Gangnam Style, he posted his first video and got 1Million views on YouTube, he then went on to winning the MTV Europe Music Awards. For Psy his fame was down to the YouTube viewers and the public, if nobody watched the video he wouldn't be where he is now. With his fame it lead to possible collaborations with people like Justin Bieber.  In the Gangnam video Psy promotes himself by wearing bright colours and using distinctive different outfits so you know clearly which one is him, in the video Psy also surrounded himself in a lot of girls and the men characters were even females dressed up as men. The dance is the most recognised bit of the whole video as after the video was released that was the most remembered bit of the  video, if you were to ever see the dance being showed there you would know what song the dance is from. The places that Psy visited in the video is so many random places and is not just based in one place.

Extension of Income- Music videos can help to promote an artist even a long time after releasing the song or album has been released, some artists are recognised years later because of how memorable there music video was. For example a few years ago Ant and Dec on their TV show as a joke performed there song that they had released 10years ago. After performing it on there show they made it to number one by the next week and got over half a million views on there song so many years later after performing. This has happened to other artists but can sometimes make more money. Even Michael Jackson who passed away about 5years ago he still makes money with his songs which shows examples that they may be gone out of the public eye or not here any more but there music video will still be recognised in the public eye which makes people still recognise the song. In the Pj and Duncan video they used bright colours for both of them so that you could distinguish which one was which, the video was very rap based which showed that they were trying to be serious with all the hand gestures but it was a fun video that people remember. When they re-performed it on their TV show they then again were wearing colourful baggy clothes but you could tell my the lack of hand gestures that they were less serious than when they originally performed it. The dance from "Lets get ready to rumble" is also a very recognised dance.












Extension of Outlets - In the past media videos would be shown on TV including chart shows and music channels such as MTV. Labels work together to with MTV to make sure the music videos get played on the channel to increase sales of the song, this is only for certain artists and genres. You find that some channels can't always air the music video until a certain time as they are not appropriate, but you will often find that they can't be shown at all because the video is just not acceptable at all.

Synergy - This is where different types of media work together, this can relate with a music artist releasing a new song and in their music video putting clips from a recent movie in, but also the movie using this artists song, this promotes the artists song in the film and the film in the artists music video. I am going to use Christina Perry for my example, her song "one thousand years" was used in the twilight film and in her music video she had clips of the movie in there, Christina Perry's video theme was so it would blend into the Twighlight theme of the dark skies and the secrecy of the area. Christina in the video wore a black feathery dress so it was plain and not to over the top. In the music video the clips are from during the day fading into her clips which are in the evening to show that its twilight.

Product placement is also a way for the record company and artist to generate income as the major label artists will certainly have product placement in their videos. Lady Gaga's telephone video had numerous product placements including diet coke, virgin mobile and plenty of fish dating site. This was not the first time that Lady Gaga's used product placement in her videos, she also used a various amount in her bad romance video.


Producers Strategies - VEVO have a partnership with Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. They host music videos on YouTube and use adverts at the start of each video to produce revenue. this is good for music companies as it allows them to regulate the online distribution of their music videos and make money from it. VEVO also have applications on many devices e.g. iPad. This allows many more people to access the content.
Producers strategies have a big impact from YouTube views. In December 2012 record labels were stripped of 2billion video views. YouTube wants to combat 'black hat' view count-building techniques. this is when hackers artificially guid up the number of views or likes on a YouTube video - enabling them to make clips more popular than they really are and increase exposure on the site. The number of views are regarded as an unofficial world popular music chart.