The Purpose of Music Videos

Music Videos appeared as a visual aid to music in 1950's France where a visual duke-box was made giving a little something to accompany  the song itself. Following this British band The Beatles created the musical film 'A Hard Days Night' containing both elements of their own music and a film with a narrative to co-inside with the songs, much like a visual CD. The Beatles went on to create three more musical documentary style films with 'Help!', 'Let it be' and 'Magical Mystery tour' which was first broadcast on the boxing day of 1967. The Beatles also in 1967 created two colour films to accompany songs 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and 'Penny Lane creating popularity with the visual audio. A year later The rolling stones had a performance of themselves as the video for popular song 'Sympathy For The Devil' which was made into a short colour film in 1970 with help from director Jean-Luc Godard boosting the music videos popularity further as it was brought into the popular culture of the time.

Next came the promotion of the music artists through collaboration with film makers in an attempt to boost the popularity of the song and or artist. The first and most famous example of this is when 'The White Stripes' front man Jack White  approached director Michael Gondry (whom went on to produce music videos for people such as Radiohead and Daft Punk and direct films Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and more recently Be Kind Rewind and Green Hornet) creating one of the most iconic music videos, all made from Lego. The iconic video boosted popularity for not only the White Stripes' music as everyone was interested in the music video but in the directing and ideas that Gondry had, leading the band on to become successful and Gondry go on to produce works as the ones i listed above. Also this one video resulted in Gondry working with The White Stripes for the majority of the career creating memorable visuals for the songs such as The Denial Twist and The Hardest Button To Button.


Artists are marketed differently depending on the image they want to portray, so the director needs to create a visual aid that says something about the band, something that gives them a persona. Mainstream Artists that are signed to big labels often have videos that gives them a clean cut image and has a high budget and luxurious locations such as Beyonce's Drunk In Love video. More indie bands try to show of their talent using the instruments and having the band member in the video much like the style of when music videos first came about with live performances, a good example of this is classic band The Verve with their song Lucky Man which features a long take of Richard Ashcroft singing and playing the guitar. Often there are groups who make their own videos such as The Prodigy. They produced their own music videos for the 1992 5* star rated album Experience. The videos contained 90's style dancing and random cut aways as its not so much about the video but the Prodigy themselves, whom all stared in the videos. The random and fast paced videos never really meant anything but to dance! as thats what they wanted people to do and often contain cut aways of them performing live, a good example of this is their video for out of space which sampled the Max Romeo - Chase the devil accapella. An example of an arty artist, trying to convey meaning or overt messages in their videos would be old school drum and bass producer Goldie with his video for Inner City Life which came out in 1995. This is a year before he broke up with Bjork a another arty pop star whos influence may of rubbed off.

In dance music and independent artist and in some cases even bigger artists on bigger dance labels won’t even produce a video for their track and will rely on the sound to promote then rather than the visuals. A good example of a homemade video to coincide with a track would be Alex Metrik – Rave Weapon , which shows some home-made digital  cut paper style graphics. Unless you are a big dance artist then it is unlikely you would have a video to accompany your song, as due to its niche market it’s not worth making a video and distracting from the melody. Many of these independent artists videos will find themselves on the label owners website and or YouTube, you probably wouldn’t find them on music TV due to the lack of popularity, unless obviously it was on MTV dance and then again it would still have to be fairly popular!
 

 

Within dance music there are quite a lot of outlets to show your work off on, from YouTube channels dedicated to finding and showing off the latest releases for all areas such as drum & bass channel UKF and or House/Garage Channel’s Eton Messy and or Subsoul to more electro/big room house on Spinnin’ Records. There are apps available such as Spotify where users and even artists share their favourite music. Now dubbed ‘The YouTube of Music’ Sound Cloud is a vital platform connecting artists and listeners using hashtags to find the latest release in different genres! Jamal Edwards SBTV is a good example of independent artists taking off, from when they started filming unknown rappers to know being worth millions of pounds,  With SBTV being supported by Richard Branson. It shows there are lots of different ways producers can connect with the listeners and there is ample opportunity to get yourself recognised. Duo My Nu Leng done just that, a pair of Drum&Bass DJs who decided to start producing music and uploading it online and one day one their tracks ‘Master plan’ was signed to BlackButterRecords which introduces them to a larger number of people which would be fame in the dance side of things !

Art in music videos is becoming increasingly popular with people developing different styles the makes music video production an art form in itself. From the My Nu Leng song Master plan with its trippy lyric video to S.E.F – Dance the night away with its split screen and visual effects. This is shown even when going back to Alex Metrik – Rave Weapon with the cut paper style graphic music video. Each video is different and captures you in a different way through its style.

Its hard for more underground artists of niche genres to get their songs played on the radio to the popularity of the track. There are thousands of songs made and recorded every day however Major artists fit with the general taste of the majority of the audience so therefore will get the play on the radio. Radio stations want to attract as many listeners as possible and to do this they play songs to appeal to a wider audience, so it’s a less appealing option to play more underground music.

The best way to get yourself known as a new artist is to show off your music to the right places. In dance music, using sound cloud and contacting YouTube channel owners can get you popular, as there are channels specifically for unknown artists in niche genres which wouldn’t appeal to the mainstream necessarily. Famous duo Gorgon City were discovered in this way as their music gained popularity to appeal to the mainstream audience.

There are many outlets for music videos through the TV with Channels such as MTV (and its sub channels i.e DANCE) Viva, 4 Music. Via the web music videos are shown off through endless amounts of  YouTube channels and on music websites such as Mix Mag and music label websites such as hospital records and all of these can be shared by anyone on any social networking sites even by artists !

 

Synergy is where a company takes a text from another company and uses it to promote their product. A more recent example of this in the music industry would be when Australian electronic instrumental producer Flume (Harley Streten)’s remix of Disclosure / You & Me was used to promote a advert by Rob Anto for Lacoste Aftershave (Musique Pub Lacoste 2014 - Life is beautiful). Lacoste have taken the power of the remix and the fame of the song and let’s not forget how good the song is, to promote their aftershave. This works as everybody who didn’t know the song and sees it on the advert will associate the song with the advert.