The purpose of music videos

The purpose of a music video is to earn money from the song, and also create a  feeling so it leaves you remembering the song and if the song is narrative, to give the listener a better understanding of the song, it is also to give a visual representation of an artist. For example just listening to a song like I need a dollar by Aloe Blacc you would just think the song is about a man who is on his last legs and has no money and he tries to get somewhere,where as instead of his travels to las vegas showing him doing multiply thing including him thinking about what he has done, finally after hitching a ride the makes his way to las vegas, he finds a dollar coin on the floor and spends it on a slot machine and wins, the story line relates to the video as the video.

Music video meanings

Some music videos have no meaning but it random, gangnam style was a huge song as no knew what it meant as it was in Korean which made it even better when a English copy came out and everyone listened to it over and over again, but everyone could do the famous dance that Park Jae-sang (Psy) does and made him the 'King of YouTube'. The biggest reason this song was so famous was because of the dance, the dance made it's way into every bar, party and club as it was easy to do and everyone knew it. The Music video i

Promote a new music video.

Some artist promote their/other music videos that are coming out in the near future. Lots of artist/bands are born from social networking sites such as twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Myspace. Lots of artist became big such as the arctic monkeys on Myspace, Rebecca Black on YouTube or lady gaga on twitter, one of the biggest celebs on twitter, with more that 40 million followers,

Lady gaga's official account (https://twitter.com/ladygaga)

She tweets about gigs and albums she or people she likes's albums, she does this so she can, get lots of fans in the UK the retweet this as she says UK monsters which is where they live.

A tweet from lady gaga

Video release event

Sometimes the video release can become an event in itself. For example Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' was a huge deal when it came out and has over 150 million views on you tube, the song thriller was the 1st song to be a 13 minute short film and was like a story that intrigued the audience.

 

Fanbases

Other artist use the internet to raise awareness for area the artist is unknown in. this could get them more views and more fan and ever create a fan base.For example Arctic monkeys, a band from Sheffield used Myspace to become famous by word of mouth, (Passing information from person to person by talking) used Myspace to connect with people out side England like the USA and Japan.

To create a visual representation of an artist

This allows an artist to be seen whilst not actually performing. A song like this is would be Kingdom skank by Gunva B. This is done if the artist does not want to be seen and possible prejudged.

Different emotions

The reason the artist does this is because they may want the listeners to have a different emotion to the song and see the artist for what they really are. They also enhance the artist's band's representation as all you can hear is them.Using this method could could communicate the energetic and styles of the artist.
A song that does this would be moves like Jagger, he puts 110% in this song.

Reinvent Themselves
Using different emotions, the artist can really reinvent themselves, for example Miley Cyrus when from being a star on Disney channel, a kid's TV channel to dancing around practically naked on YouTube, in her song Wreaking ball at 42 seconds into the song. This is done by making a music video as different to what the media know them to be as possible, so they can attract a newer audience, so for Miley Cyrus this could attract more mature teenagers instead of the young kids around 9 years old.












Some artists try to appeal as being even more talented with their songs Bruno Mars does this well in his song, 'when I was your man.' He showed the whole world that a song could be amazing just on piano and brought a whole generation into loving piano and playing his song on their home pianos.

To create synergy with other media sectors

Some music videos even become so huge that TV shows copy them or makes jokes about them. One example would be American dad, a show about a father who works in the C.I.A, Stan and his son Steve do the thriller dance In the episode May the Best Stan Win This could mean that that song with over 150  million views is so big that they had to dance to it.

Another example would be the Simpsons,(an American adult animated sitcom created by Matt Groening that has been been running for 25 years as of 2014), In the episode 'behind the laughter,' they sang the song boogie and made up a remix for it, and used it twice using the same lyrics but just adding Christmas in the respective places.

Leading to darker places

The music video may also leap into being about darker things such as rape, drugs, suicide, Bulling and love/lust. The artist does this so that the audience and get a different perspective on what is happening. a song that does this is superchick by hero as the song is about bulling.

To be art in their own right

The music video can be become memorable and even be more remember than the song come times.
an example is again Miley Cyrus, as her wrecking ball music video is a big video on YouTube at the moment and many people listen to the song, the video idea then becomes an idea for others to use as they're own videos like coping the video on a webcam website like omegle.com. 

Product Placement

The music video could also pioneer a new use for technology,
This is called product placement, or embedded marketing, this is any form of visual commercial communication consisting of the inclusion of or reference to a product, a service or the trade mark thereof so that it is featured within a program". Product placement stands out as a marketing strategy because it is imperative to attach the utmost importance to "the context and environment within which the product is displayed or used 
 This could as simple as using the item in the video , for example blurred lines had beats pills through out the song and that convinced a lot of fans to go buy the beats pills to listen to the song.

A 1 Direction toy at Argos

Other Some Music video are frequently played to keep the artist in the public eye so that they can sell more products like CDs and toys or other products endorsed by the artist.  This can be used to increase the fan base and to earn a lot of money as the product are usually brought and can be quite expensive. For example this is a one direction toy from Argos which cost 70 pound usually. Having a product like that would make a lot of fans want to buy it, to show their loyalty to the artist.

Story lines

A lot of music video have a story to them, this is to interest the viewer and make them what to know what/why this is happening to the actor/artist.The story line could involve the artist in any way the director of the music video would like to, meaning the video could end up with the main character passing away or having a happy ending, In the music video for Trouble Maker by Olly Murs, is about him randomly constantly running into the same girl again and again, while she tries to keep her jobs but losing them for disagreement on how customers should be treated, the music video uses a story to keep the viewers watching the music video as the artist makes money from the views that the channel gets.