2. What is the purpose of a music video?
The purpose of a music video is...
• To promote a single/artist/album
• Increase sales and downloads
• To illustrate the song e.g. „Stan‟ by Eminem
• To express an individual‟s emotions e.g. „Nothing
compares 2 U‟ Sinead O‟Connor
• To appeal to a visual audience, some people
prefer to watch a music video than just listening
to the single, a music video that would appeal to
this type of audience would be „Take on me‟ by A-
ha
3. What is the purpose of a music video?
• To raise the audience‟s awareness or profile of
the artist/group, for example before the video
„Wannabe‟ by the Spice girls was released they
were little known, come the release of their
music video everyone knew who they were
• Product placement e.g. Christina Aguillera and
her perfume „Not myself tonight‟
4. What is the purpose of a music video?
• To market an image, the video “dirrty” by
Christina Aguilera is a great example as the
sweet innocent girl from Mickey‟s Clubhouse
launched her solo career she also launched a
very different image. Another recent artist
who is good at marketing an image is Lady
Gaga as she promotes her songs and her as
a „brand‟ effectively throughout the media.
5. How might we measure the success
criteria of a music video?
How can we measure how successful a music video is?
Here are many examples of how we can do this:
• The amount of plays/views on Youtube is a very modern
way we can tell how successful a music video is today
• The amount of Airplay/ television play the music
video/single gets
• Compare the sales before the video and after the music
video is released
• Other media publicity the video might receive like
Newspaper articles or features on the news e.g.
“Gangman style” on Newsnight
6. How might we measure the success
criteria of a music video?
• Amount of publicity received by the music video
• The amount of downloads both legal and illegal
• Where the video/single peeks in the music charts
whether that be itunes or the UK Big Top 40
• CD sales
7. • It is worth nothing how there has been a
massive switch in the importance of
Youtube from music television channels
e.g. MTV
• Most viewing of music videos now appears
to be online
