The Purpose of Music Videos

What is the purpose of Music Videos?

The main purpose of a music video is to sell the song of the artist and cause a reaction to the viewer so that it leaves them remembering the song. Like the Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' video. She looks really alien and weird like something that came from another planet. The video looked different to what you get from the lyrics, instead of showing something that people can relate to (a couple arguing, someone getting bullied etc.), Lady Gaga chose to show something that people will talk about, whether it conveyed the lyrics of the song so that people would understand or find confusing when watching it, (the clip doesn't quite match up with the song lyrics). Music video's give the listener a better understanding of the songs and what it's trying to convey, this happens mostly when you watch a music video with a narrative structure in it. They are there to entertain the viewer and show of the talents of the artist, like acting, dancing and most of all, the singing 

Sometimes, songs need a visual aid that helps get the message across to what it's trying to convey. It helps the songs get recognised. Lyrics often hide the meaning of a particular music or it could mean something else, having a music video makes it easier to understand the songs that often a lyric can not do. 

Artist often use music videos to express their personalities and creativeness. An example is Katy Perry; she’s always acting out a different character for each music video that she does. You might see her dressed as an alien or an old woman, all these helps the viewer to visually understand the music more. This makes it more interesting to watch.

Seen in ET with Kanye West

The One Who Got Away

Music videos are there to sell the CD'S of the artist to the viewer; it's also there for them to download it on websites such as iTunes. Creating a memorable visual for the song increases the music track sales. Artist use this marketing strategy of expansion and exposure to increase their popularity and profile. iTunes is a media player and library application from Apple. The application is used to download, play and organise audio tracks and videos on computers, phones and macs. Through iTunes, you can buy and download music. Each time a person downloads a music track from a particular artist, the musician in turn will get an increase in sales and more recognition. Music charts like the Big Top 40 (weekly music chart update) also helps the artist to be widely known. The chart works alongside iTunes by counting how many downloads per person the artist receives  the person with the most will then become number one. Popular songs that get released around midnight, could find themselves number one, because they received thousands of downloads, a recent one is Daft Punk's 'Get Lucky', a song that was number one for 4 weeks.

All these purposes are there to promote the artist. The music video of the artist is a promotional tool for them to become more popular and well known.

Example of a popular Music Video

Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ was listed in the Guinness world Records in 2006 as the ‘most successful music video’, it sold over 9 million records. In 2009, the video was put into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, the first music video to get this. This honour was given for being ‘culturally and historically significant. At the time at its release however, the video didn't get much acclaim because this was the first ever music video to be 10 minutes plus long. People didn't know to react but over the years, it became really popular in popular culture.