Task One – Understand the purpose of music videos

What are a music video and its purpose?

A music video is a short piece of film or imagery used as accompaniment to music. Music video has different roles, not only promotional ways, but also for a better connection with the audience because they aid in the delivery of the message the artist is trying to deliver/portray. The most important purpose of music video is for promotion, publicity, to make some money through the increase of sales production, artist availability – extension of income, promotional, extension of outlets, synergy, strategies of the procedures use are all the main kind of purposes when it comes to creating a music video. 
The purpose of a music video is to promote the artist, which could lead to fans buying singles or albums from the artists which is supporting their music. However, if an artist or a band group were not available for a live show they would show their music video instead.

Availability of the Artist  

The Birth of the music video came about because the Beatles found the pressure of touring and promoting their new single too much. In order to satisfy world wide demand they began making promotional clips for distribution and broadcast in other countries. The Beatles featured in their film which was called ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. They did this to allow themselves to help promote their record releases, without the need of making an in person appearance. Nowadays the artist intensions, is to give fans a taste of what is to come in their new album. It was only after queen’s success after shooting a music video, for their single ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ , this is when it became a more regular practice for record labels. As soon as they finish shooting the music video it would then be show on Television.

Before; on top of the pops, if the artist was not available to perform on the show, they would bring dancers to perform over their music, this was done to help entertain the audiences that would go  see this music video and it was not fair on the artist as this does not portray what the band want from the dancers, also they could create a bad image of what the song is about as well, an example is the Pan’s people. This was the reason why Queen started to do music videos, so it can be seen and not performed by dancers.

Promotional music videos

This is an promotional tool, this is there to help show viewers of how the artist appearance is and show the artists characteristics. This is like an "advertisement" because; the artists are selling and promoting themselves for fans to buy their singles or to buying their album. Additionally, it is designed to draw attention to the artist and the song too, for example Lady Gaga; she is an artist who has over 'six hundred million' views on her music video on Youtube, which was one of her single she made ‘Bad romance’. What she did in the music video was an abstract towards the viewers and it was something the audience haven’t seen before, so it made the viewers feel the need to go and watch it. Furthermore, the music video should appeal to the audience, if the music video appeals to the audience,this would draw a lot of viewers in having an interest of the artists and making the artist fan base potentially becoming really big in size. For example, PSY’S music video for the single ‘Gangnam style’.  We see that PSY’s music video is appealing to an audience and the music video is "animated" which can appeal to kid and also to advertise who PSY is and what type of artist he is. For example, "he is an animated artist that would add anything that may not match the song" because this may be used to entertain the audience and make them feel the need to watch the video consistently and make his fan page increase in size.

Finally, the dance in the video is easy to replicate and many audience can remember the dance to this song. After the song was released there was a large range of merchandise related to it including things such as tops, mugs, games etc. Therefore the video was a huge promotional tool for the artist. 

Extension of income

Music video are a good opportunity for an artist to extend their income instead of just making the music video as they want, they could add little things that can bring a lot more income. This may be because if they could encourage audiences to buy their merchandise, such as their album etc then they could gain an income from the audience who buys their merchandise. also, this can lead to making the audiences who purchases the artist merchandise, attend their music festivals and tours to see the artists. This therefore would mean that the artist would make more income from the audiences that goes and buy their merchandise and come to their tours and music festivals. Furthermore, this makes the artist have a good product placement. A really good example of a music video that was able to show a good product placement is 'Telephone by Lady Gaga and Beyoncé'. 

Extension of outlet, music video enables the artist to extend on their outlet on which they're accessible through. An example of this would be music channels such as Kiss, MTV etc. They also consist of websites, which allows the fans to catch with updates that are around when the artist single is coming out or album. Also, they consist of update about tour dates and could be selling products/merchandise for the artist.

Therefore, this advertise and promote the artist at the same time and this would mean that viewers are most likely to let their family or friends know about the artist they love. Additionally, the websites would give the viewers the opportunity to sign up on the artist website where they could receive a newsletters regarding any news/update about the artist or the tour date.

Here is an example of the Hip Hop artist Jay-Z’s website, this is filled with lots of updates about and related to Jay-z for his fans. And it has everything a fan would want from Jay-z. This outlets also helps audiences become a fan of Jay-z.

Creating a Brand, groups or artist are mostly sold as a brand, and the "music video acts as the product of the brand", they hope that the audience can buy into their "brand". This is done through the ‘Mise-en-scene’, in which it shows how the scenery would look for the music video and expand the look of the video into the rest of their lives. The artist also maintains a consistent image throughout a range of music videos, websites, platforms and more factors. This enables the audience to know what type it is (if it’s a he/she) in the terms of their style. Some artist would be wary of their image rather than the products and the 'Spice girls' is a prime example of this.

Each of the members in the spice girls have their own identity, which sells to the audience. It allows the audience to understand their different personalities when it comes to their music. Additionally, when it comes to creating a brand, it's the song itself that helps to form or create a brand. Therefore, it's the meaning of the song that sells to the audiences. Therefore, the artist image has a small percent to do with the sale of the song. A perfect example would be ‘Ed-Sheeran’. Ed-Sheeran is a talented lyricist and does not have an image that is abstract. The images of Ed-Sheeran is just original, which infers that his looks doesn’t matter more than the talent that he has. Furthermore, his music is meaningful and significant which sends a positive message out to the audiences. Aso, another comparison we can make is the images of Lady Gaga and Adele. Both artists are highly successful but each one have their own individual images which suggest that they appeal to different target audiences. Therefore, adele appears to those who are/were heart-broken people, whereas, Lady Gaga appears to those are more of the 'bad','strong-minded' people. 

Synergy

Synergy is another way where artists can promote their music and themselves. This is where two products are working together, for example is where a film and an artist songs are combined together. This way they can result in better advertisement and promotion for both. Another example is when the artist music video has scenes from the film and their music video. The film would have the artist song playing in it. Therefore, both are promoting each other. A best example of this is the James Bond film Sky Fall and Adele’s song Sky fall. The filmmakers and Adele were able to work together to produce the soundtrack for skyfall. This meant that both parties were able to gain promotion in the film they made and the song she made. This meant that the fan base of Adele are mostly likely to watch the James bond film because they liked the music video and also the fan base of James Bond films would listen to Adele because she was featured in it.