Purposes of Music Videos

Brief History Of The Genre

1960's- Experiments with promotional short films began in the mid 60's such musicians as The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The ability to show a short film of the latest release meant that the act themselves didnt need to acutally appear 'live' to perfom the track. Therefore the appeal of bands grew furthur. Some Examples of Pop Promos: Bob Dylan; The Animals; The Beatles; The Rolling Stones; The Small Faces.



1970's- Pop Promo Examples: Queen; David Bowie; The Jackson Five; Abba; Roxy Music (Bryan Ferry).



1980's- With the launch of Mtv in 1981 there was now a real need to create music videos in order to ensure your music was heard globally. Initialy however it was mainly british acts creating the videos for the broadcast- hence a massive 'brit invasion' into the us charts in the 1980's.

1980's Examples of music videos: Duran Duran; Adam and the Ants; The Cure; Michael Jackson; Aha. Promotional It is a visual representation of a piece of music and is a further opportunity for the track to be 'heard', it's also a great way to promote a particular artist or track to illustrate three/four tracks from an album.



Extension of Income.
To keep the artist in the public eye for as long as possible, this could be months after the album has been released. Its also to help recoup some of the production costs of recording the music initially.

Extension of Outlets
Television- Mtv; Vh1; Kerrang; 4 Music;
Internet- Youtube; Voolpool; Video Cure;
Downloads- Ipod; Mobile; Phones; Mp3's; Blackburrys/Iphones;

From some of the Youtube figures we can see that pop promo videos have taken over, and most people see them, as youtube had internet 14.8 billion online videos viewed in January 2009 alone, if we take that as an average for each month then youtube would get around 177.6 billion viewers a year showing that internet technology and pop promos on the internet have really taken off over the last few years.

Links to Film or Tv Programmes (synergy)
Soundtracks- Clips of films appear as part of narrative/performance.
X-factor; Battle of Bands; Live and Unsigned;
Celebrity appearances.

X-Factor is another show that has publicised music and pop promos this show has taken over and become a lot bigger over the years that it has been running. When it first started in September 2004 it did 23 shows in that year and it got an average of 6.90 million viewers. Now in August 2009 when it was last on it had 31 shows and got an average of 13.31 million viewers which shows us that it is another thing that has taken over in the last few years.