The Purpose of Music Videos

Introduction
The music video has become a staple of modern popular culture.
Music films started during the 30's with early talkie films. Singin in the Rain homage's these movies.


Over the 60's came the Scopitone a music video that projected short 16mm videos to accompany songs being played.



Around this time people also began recording live performances of gigs to be played on televsion, things like this and top of the pops were common.



Then in the 70's Queen redefined music with Bohemian Rhapsody, the first conventional music video. The rest is history.




Promotion of the Artist, The Song and Directors

The promotion of the artist is to make the Singer / Band more commercial being able to sell them to any audience. Video promotion is one of the best ways to get an album or single noticed. A great example would be the video for Blondie Atomic. Blondie is promoted in this video by background posters advertising the band.
Advantage

• Promotes the artists so you can sell all their product

Disadvantage

• Sometimes an artist with a particular iconography doesn't do a song the right justice.

The promotion of a song rather than a singer is just as important. In the video Deadmau5 for Ghosts N Stuff the iconography for the artist is hardly shown. instead it follows a non singing narrative that still entertains the audience and spreads the song. Deadmau5 is promoted in his video by the iconography of the reoccurring Mau5 Head his trademark mask

Advantages

• Makes the track more money. 

Disadvantage

• Sells the artist short making them less viewed in the media.

Directors might go out of their way to gain experience or promote themselves in the industry as well. These videos often indulge the directors creative liberties as much as the performers. Here is one by Spike Jonze acclaimed director for Her. This is styled after the kind of handy-cam antics used in Jackass. Spike Jonze promotes himself as a filmmaker by dressing the Jackass cast as Pandas to run amok, this is a classic mark of his work.
Advantages

• Promotes directors ability to make films.

Disadvantages

• Video might be to director centric and will override the musical talent of the band.

Producers strategies

Producers or Bands / Artists use music videos to promote bands in different ways. Since each band wants a different image its appropriate for their genre of music.

Major Label
Major Label music videos are generally big budget videos aimed to sell their band or perform by playing on television as much as possible. These are the heavyweights of the music industry and a video with these guys is going to be saturated on all audio and visual outlets. A great example is Johnny Cash hurt who is labelled under Columbia. Cash Stars in this video, this how he promotes himself.
Advantage

• High quality video
• Promotion

Disadvantages

• Suffocates everything that isn't a major label 

Independent Label
Independent music labels that are looking to sell bands generally have smaller budgets than Major music labels. My example here is a small French label called Record Maker founded in 2000. One of their Artists Kavinsky after gaining notoriety for getting his song Nightcall in the cult 2011 movie Drive. He got the chance to make a music video promoting his single Protovision. Kavinsky promotes himself under the Alias of the ghost driver a musical alias ( similar to Ziggy Stardust) this character is his iconography along with the Ferrari testarossa his characters car.
Advantage

• Some budget for videos.

Disadvantage

• Limited distrbution.

Self Produced 
Some times an artist or band who hasn't yet been signed to a label. This means their range of resources for their music video is generally much shorter than band that is signed to a label be it Independent or Major
This is the Protomens music video for their song "Will of One" from before they got signed to the independent label Sound Machine. Note that they have to make do with limited technology. The Protomen dress themselves up for their performances in a diesel punk homage to Megaman, the band promote themselves through their recognizable iconography through the video.
Advantage

• Complete creative freedom

Disadvantage

• Saturation of others looking for fame 
• no money.

Art Statement

Some bands / Artists choose a less conventional approach to their music videos with a degree of creativity that although great to watch they generally promote the artist less but still accompany the song in an abstract way that works. Daft punks Around the World video keeps to the beat but has no discernible narrative using the performers shown as living instruments. Daft punk promote themselves through their artistic kink to their video, they don't actually appear or promote their music as such just make a hugely memorable video.

Advantages

• Unrestrained creativity leads to new exciting things.

Disadvantages

• Major labels might try to censor bands and restrain them form less palatable artistic videos

Extension of Income

When a Band or Artist get played on the radio, the artist should receive royalties for the selling of their product. If the performer wants a music video as well in theory he should receive royalties both when the video is shown and when the song is played on the radio.

Although it cannot be calculated precisely what songs are gonna sell well, companies will buy popular music videos in advance to saturate the market with them. This can be used to better promote the band as more money can help increase the production value of the video, therefore help sell a better product.

Extension of Outlets and Platforms

The media has dozens of outlets that could promote a song, music video or band It's important that the right one is linked to the product shown. There are Television channels like MTV hits, Viva and 4 music for showing music videos. Along with these you have the Internet revenue and distribution though sales.

With the ever growing amount of media outlets there is more scope and range for new artists and more obscure musicians too seep through the cracks, less used websites like Vimeo are perfect for new unknown bands to become famous as there isn't as heavy major label influence as things like Youtube and music television channels.

Synergy

Synergy or is when a product that is sold also sells other products through licencing deals. This is a mutual benefit as the subsidiary products generally pay to the main product. This doubles the exposure of both products meaning that more people see it.

A great example of this would be the synergy of The Austin Powers movie franchise and Madonna in her video for beautiful stranger. This is a conjunction between Universal studios and Maverick/Warner Brothers. It was hugely successful winning the MTV award for Best Video from a film, Helping to promote both Madonnas song and the new Austin Powers movie "The Spy who Shagged Me".  The song also Appear in the films soundtrack. This helps promote both the Madonna and the Movie as they are both being shown in one another allotted space in the media.




Conclusion

In the world of viral videos, YouTube  and Vines. Short videos with catchy music that can easily be consumed on an media device like phones and tablets. This isn't a thing that's going away any time soon, last year Gangnam Style made nearly 2 million dollars in you tube advertisements alone.