What is a Music Video?

Today we discussed as a class what actually is a music video, apart from the obvious analagy that it is a video, it's got music with it, therefor it must be a music video.

First of all we discussed how it acts as a 'promotional tool'. Creating a music video will promote a series of aspects;
The first being the band and the song. An audience will more likely listen to an artists work if it is put into video form. This is because, due to viral marketing the video can be played on popular music channels, posted onto youtube and on various websites such as: facebook, myspace, twitter etc. Giving the song a wider spread of advertising.

The image of the band is also promoted through music videos. Seeing as, mainly for major label music video productions, the image is such a huge part of the success of the song this means that the image is presented to the audience in a visual form.

The record label is also promoted through a music video. A lot of music videos that I have watched on youtube have a small clip before the video starts, introducing the record label. This means that the audience, after watching the music video will perhaps be more interested in what other videos have been produced by this record label, depending on if they liked the video or not.



A music video also acts as marketing for other media products such as films. This is called 'synergy' which is when a piece of media is cross-promoted across different types of media. An example of this would be the song 'Decode' by Paramore which was produced particularly for the hit film 'Twilight'. It so happens that, due to the books becoming incredibly popular (another form of syngery) the films were produced, and songs were promoted through the film.



Another way to describe a music video is that it is simply a creative artefact of interest in itself. Before I began media I wasn't as interested in the filming techniques used in music videos. However now that I have been educated more into the matter I am far more interested in the filming and production of a music video as opposed to the song itself.