Purpose of music video

Purpose of Music Video 

By Dylan Corcoran  

In this report, I will be discussing the purpose of music videos. Music videos are mainly used to promote an artist’s song however there are some other purposes that music videos are used for. An example of this is that they can be used to advertise products, for example in Lady GaGa’s music video for her song ‘Telephone’ (2010) she promotes products like Diet Coke and Beats.  

In the early years of music videos, audiences would be able to see music videos on popular music channels like MTV. In 1981 MTV was first launched, at the time this was unique as it was one of the first and leading channels to play nothing but music videos. The first music video to be broadcasted on this channel was ‘The Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star’’ for many years MTV was the leading channel in terms of playing music videos. However, in 2005 YouTube was launched. With other 60 hours of videos uploaded per day YouTube has since become the world’s biggest video site. Popular artists including names like Drake, Miley Cyrus and One Direction use YouTube to upload their music videos. According to a recent article by Greg Cannizzaro (CEO of Go Indie) YouTube is the number one music video streaming site.  

However, despite being the most popular music site, not everybody uses YouTube to watch music videos. Some other sites used to consume music video include but are not limited to Vevo, Dailymotion and Vimeo.  

Music videos are also a good source of income for Record Labels, this is because quite often a record label will have ownership rights of the artists music videos. This quite often means that the label would earn more money for a music video then what the artist would. However, in some cases the owner of the label is the artist itself, an example of this would be Kanye West. Kanye is the founder and former president of GOOD Music. Every video made under the GOOD Music label would benefit Kanye directly. The music video for Kanye’s song ‘Fade’ (2016) has over 109 million views. This means that all profits made by the music video will go directly to Kanye.  

Furthermore, at the end of every music video under the GOOD Music Label, there would be promotion of the artist's latest album. This gives additional information on the artist and the audience can click on the link and be taken straight to various music sites where the album is available. This attracts potential new fans who were once casual listeners, or were just curious to check out what is trending within the music community. 

To conclude music videos are essential to an artist’s career as they are a means of gaining a wider audience. During the 1970’s music videos wasn’t as important as today. Music videos are mainly used to promote the song however, music videos provide an opportunity for the artist to become creative, experiment and sometimes create a visual narrative for their song.