Purpose of a music video

The purpose of a music video

There are a few purposes of a music video, one of them being to increase the profits of a track another being the fact that you can’t just play music on tv and leave the audience watching a blank screen, so the music videos are devolved so the audience can watch something whilst listening to the track.

Music videos are also used to promote bands and songs, as clips of music videos are used in adverts on television and with the growing use of YouTube more and more bands are uploading there music videos onto the site. The music category on the site being one of the most viewed categories along with gaming.

Good music videos can do well to a bands fan-base, a good video can get people talking about it and telling their friends about it which in turn makes them watch it and tell even more people about it. A good example of this is Ok Go’s video for their song Here it goes again. This video has gained a large audience and has even been featured on television a number of time, the video itself is just one continuous shot of the band dancing on treadmills and it has inspired many people who have tried to spoof the video, re-create it or do a similar thing for something other than a music video such as Berocca who did an advert with people dancing on treadmills a lot like the music video.

In 1894, Edward Marks and Joe Stern hired electrician George Thomas and various performers to promote sales of their song ‘The Little Lost Child’. Using a magic lantern (a 17^th century projector), Thomas projected a series of still images on a screen simultaneous to live performances. This became a popular form of entertainment known as the illustrated song, the first step toward music video.

Then in 1926, many short musical films were produced. Vitaphone shorts featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. Spooney Melodies in 1930 was the first true musical video series. Shorts were typically six minutes in duration, and featured Art Deco-style animations and backgrounds combined with film of the performer singing. Another early form of music video was one-song films called ‘promotional clips’ made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand.