Music Video Assignment

Music Video

I have been asked by the college to put together an online blog post detailing some of the purposes of music videos as well as their styles, conventions and techniques. The college's record label is looking to diversify into full packages that would include music videos for their signed artists.

Music videos can be used in many different ways, one of these is to promote various things, one of these things can be themselves as a band or as an individual, many people in the music industry may do this when they change their type of style or music. The biggest example of this is Miley Cyrus, she was best known for her acting in Hannah Montana on the Disney channel. In the past couple of years she has been trying to change her style of music therefore making herself a bigger star. When she brought out ' We Can't Stop ', it got more than 10.7 million views in the first 24 hours, making the public forget when she was the actress on the Disney channel. 3 years later and it now has 730 million views. Another example of her style is her music video and song ' Wrecking Ball ' which has 867 million views.

Promotional music videos' purpose is to promote the artist's self image and music. Many individuals in the music industry create these videos to show the audience that they have changed in terms of style and music. For example Miley Cyrus is now classed as a bolder artist. For example in her song ' We can't stop ', the main concept of the music video is partying, being young and people having their first taste of sexual and drug discovery. When viewers see this, they then think of her as being more provocative and sensual.

Financial

In the beginning of the reality TV show ' The X Factor ', in the beginning stages there were five male singers who all had the initial aim of becoming solo artists however, they failed to progress to the next stage of the show, however they grouped together to make the famous boy band called One Direction. Although they didn't win the competition, Simon Cowell saw a bright future ahead of them and therefore signed them onto his record label Syco music. The music video ' Night Changes ' was released on November 2014 and now has 225 million views. The video is a point of view of going on a date with all five members of the group however in five different locations, reflecting the group members' different personalities and styles. Capturing them singing and looking at the camera is extremely effective as it gives the impression that the singers are speaking directly to the viewers ( most girls ). The main purpose behind this production is to make money from their album ' Four ' as this was their biggest hit at the time.

Extension Of Outlets

Making music videos is one things however the next step is to actually broadcast the. Due to high demand for music videos on big companies like Sky, they now have a designated section just for music. Music channels such as MTV, Viva and many more are the source of music videos and celebrity drama. Production companies pay the channels to play the videos on TV and the promotion boosts up the sales and recognition of the artist. Another type of outlet is CD and DVD sales as music videos can also be sold on DVD. Sometimes there is a special promotional pack including the soundtrack for example the Christmas period. Some CD albums put music videos on as an extra DVD to play, meaning the songs get more recognition. CD sales are increasing through use of online companies such as Apple Music, iTunes and Spotify. However you can find the music videos online for free where as iTunes you have to pay £0.99 - £2.50. Or a monthly subscription e.g Spotify or Apple Music, which helps pay for new music videos. Most people like to watch music videos for free therefore they might watch a lot of YouTube, in this case you can watch them whenever and wherever you like as they're free, as long as you have internet. 

Synergy

Synergy is where two products or companies come together to make a video, and use the video as a platform to give them both success where they deserve it. For example a music video maybe made to increase the publicity for a film, however it also may prove successful in its own right. One example is the music video ' You know my name ' by Chris Cornell for the film ' Casino Royale ' a very famous James Bond film. As it was a very successful film it helped to increase sales of the song and the soundtrack and to this day it still is popular and won Chris Cornell many awards. Another example of synergy is if a video is shown on YouTube and is getting a lot of views or was predicted to get a lot of views then companies may pay to advertise on the video to help improve their publicity. 

Producers' strategies

There are three potential ' producers ', 

The major label

The independent music label

The Artist

A major label is for a mainstream artist who generally sells lots of records and is high in the top charts for their genre in music, goes on tour and has merchandise. They have large budgets for music videos or other promotional material. Main stream music like R and B or Pop, for example Rhianna is signed with Roc Nation. 

An independent music label would be a smaller budget overall, a different type of music genres for example indie, the target audience will be completely different compared to the major label.

The artist - may decide to make the video themselves, often unsigned, it can be used as a promotional tool to express to the audience how much he wants his chance, however this is usually due to a low budget. Cost effective technical equipment makes it easier to access, produce and distribute material.

Styles:

Every artist has their very own style of how they perform, as I have explained earlier in the blog, Miley Cyrus was once just an actress for Hannah Montana, now she is a multi million making artist. As you can see below this is a screen shot of how much Miley Cyrus is actually worth.

A lot of the popular music genres, e.g. Pop and R & B is where a lot of similar type of styles are in the music industry, for example Rihanna could be compared to Beyonce as they are in the same type of genre and are very similar to each other, as you can see below there are two pictures of them both, they dress quite similar.

However when it comes to music videos, Rihanna and Beyonce could be compared to differently, as you can see below there are two music videos, one from each artist. Rihanna is a lot more focused on herself whereas in Beyonce's you have the whole balcony as well as the background to the left of her whilst she is singing the song.

Conventions

Especially in the Pop side of the music industry the genre Pop has now came across to the audience mostly about drugs, sex and alcohol or relationships. Many songs in the charts right now will all have something to do with one of the three, for example if I am listening to Capital FM on the radio, I may listen to 5 completely different artists in the space of 30 minutes however the song meanings and lyrics in the songs can possibly be very similar to each other. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/singles - this is a link to the BBC top 40 charts.

Just a couple of examples, ' I would like ', ' Touch ', ' Sensual ', ' Say you won't let go ' and many more of the top 40 songs in this type of genre are all leading to either drugs, sex, relationships or alcohol, this is where this kind of genre is now at.

This can be compared to a completely different type of genre in the music industry being country music, this is totally different to Pop, country music is a form of popular music originating from the rural southern parts of the US. It's a mixture of ballads and dance tunes played characteristically on fiddle, banjo, guitar and pedal steel guitar, as well as many artists who also sing.

Techniques

Many music videos in the pop genre are all filmed similarly, for example something always happens when the music changes beat your camera is going to move onto something else, this is called cutting to the beat. When this happens the camera movements and angles are also going to change, as it is more noticeable for the camera to change angles when the beat has also changed. A good example of cutting to the beat is ' Rolling in the Deep ' sung by Adele, I really like how when the lyrics ' crystal clear ' you get the many glasses of water, which also vibrate in the next scene.

Conclusion

In this blog I believe that the college's record label can now look more promptly into diversifying into full packages which will include music videos for their signed artists, I think this blog post details some of the purposes a music video does as well as their styles, conventions and techniques.