Purpose of a Music Promotional Video

The purpose of a music video is:

Music videos are used as a form of promotion/ publicity for a particular artist and their single or album. They are also used to make money for the company increasing sales, a music video can add to a song making it more marketable. This is done if a music video is creates popularity for the song this then can go on to persuade the target audience to buy the CD/download. Music videos also have the ability to raise the audience awareness or profile of the artist/group. 

Product placement can also be used in a music video to promote a particular  product an example of this is Christine Aguillera advertising her perfume "Not Myself Tonight" in her music video. People watching the music video will probably already be fans of Christina Aguillera as such they will want to buy merchandise associated with their favourite artist, this will increase sales Artists often advertise their own products as if people associate their favorite artists with their products they are more likely to buy them.  

Synergy 
The Music Video exists as only one strand of a multimedia campaign, and is just one way in which a song is
promoted. An artist will also make use of various other forms of media to publicise their song such as television
show appearances, radio specials, adverts etc. The music industry as a whole has a relationship with a number
of different media: Radio, TV, Print media, Film.

New Media.

There is often a clear sense of synergy across a number of platforms. Synergy works to be mutually beneficial

for both film/TV programme and artist allowing both parties to make more money by being able to reach wider

audiences.

Here are some examples of synergy between a film/tv show and a song shown in the music video

"Alice"

“Robin Hood Prince of Thieves”

“Four Weddings and a Funeral”

  

“Skyfall”

Military Wives TV

What makes a successful Music Video

For a music video to be considered successful it would have to have a distinguishing quality that makes it

successful whether that be originality or how much money it makes there are many different ways that a

music video can be considered successful. For me I think that the most successful music videos are those

that people cannot stop talking about. The music videos that are so inventive and creative that it creates a lot

of word of mouth for the artist whose song is being promoted int the music video. More word of mouth often

leads to more views on YouTube and downloads of the song on iTunes which in turn earns more money from

increased sales. 

Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975) Dir. Bruce Gower.

Bohemian Rhapsody was an extremely influential music video as it was the first time that a music video had
a significant impact on the sales of a song, after the release of the music video for Bohemian Rhapsody the
song went to number one in the charts. This was one of the first music videos to be taken seriously as it was
something unheard of to use a music video as a creative medium, the video was considered artwork as such
it was incredibly popular. This is what lead to increasing sales of the song as the music video was
added publicity as such the music video for Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was considered a huge success. 

Record Companies and Organic and Synthetic Music

"The Majors"

The music industry is dominated by four multi national corporations

Universal

James Bay

Here is a list of a few people that are signed to Universal :

Imagine Dragons

Ellie Goulding

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Sony Music

Paloma Faith

Here is a list of a few people that are signed to Sony:

Foxes

Kings of leon

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Warner Brothers

Here is a list of a few people that are signed to Warner Bro's:

Echosmith

Cher

Kylie Minogue

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EMI

Bastille

"EMI is one of the greatest names in the history of music, with roots stretching right back to beginnings of recording. EMI has always been at the forefront of music around the world, bringing artists as diverse and influential as The Beatles, Queen, Pink Floyd, Robbie Williams, The Beach Boys and Maria Callas to international prominence. EMI was acquired by UMG in 2012."

•These are referred to as ‘The Majors’. The majority of these are backed by conglomerates with stakes in other industries such as; Film, TV and Electronics. 

•Most of these ‘Majors’ own, or license, a series of smaller subsidiary companies in order to reach different kinds of audiences in different kinds of genre.

•Columbia

•Island

•Syco

•RCA

•Virgin,

•These companies are known as ‘major-independents’. 

•There are a huge number of small companies with little or no financial connection to the majors.

• These companies often concentrate on a small number of acts, within specialised niches in the industry.

•These are called ‘Independents’. An example of a highly successful independent  is ‘Domino Records’. (Find out all you can about this Record label).

•It is often that record labels begin as independents, but then are bought by a major and then become major-independents.

Types of music

Artisits can be divided into two catagories Organic and Sythetic.

Organic 

The term "organic" is used to describe bands where the music comes first, they make the kind of music
they want to make and then the record labels (if signed) try and sell this music to the correct market
segment. "Organic" music often appeals to a niche, but can appeal to a mass audience too. 

The Beatles / Radiohead are a good example of an organic band. The band members knew each other
and had a shared love of music. The music came first- then the fame!  

The Beatles

Radio head

The Beatles lived and played in Hamburg for a year when they were beginning. 

The ‘Synthetic’ refers to manufactured groups ( ‘X Factor’ methodology), and it is the record labels

that sit in the driving seat. A gap in the market is identified, and then it is exploited by the

development of music, and often the artist, to suit this gap.

An American synthetic group was created to rival The Beatles called The Monkees. They were chosen

and put together via auditions and they had their music written for them to ensure their success and that

they made money by appealing to their audience. 

The Monkees

Money is the ultimate goal in this operation. Acts such as “One Direction” / “The Spice Girls” are a

good examples of “manufactured” artists.

The band One Direction was manufactured by Simon Cowell on the show X-factor. Each artist had independently auditioned and they were all put together to create a band that Simon Cowell thought would be successful with audiences. Since then they have been instructed how to dress and what songs to sing to ensure their popularity with their intended target audience to increase sales of their album. For example the song "Little things" was written by Fiona Bevan and Ed Sheeran. 

One Direction

History of the music video

Before the music video

In the 1940's and 1950's  Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley were the biggest stars around the world. The only ways that fans could have access to these stars was to watch them in films, TV specials or in concert. Outside of that there really wasn't availability to see them, this is dues to many of the mediums that we use today not being around at that time for examples music videos had not been created at the time. Here are some examples of these stars and some of the things that fans would have been able to see at the time.

Bing Crosby

Frank Sinatra

Elvis Presley

                           

The First Music Video

In the 1960's the Beatles became the next big thing. However this time the need for exposure to fans was much bigger, and the reactions of the fans was almost hysteria many would scream and make incredible amounts of noise. This became frustrating when the Beatles decided to do concerts as it would be quite distracting making it incredibly hard to play their music properly. At their concert at the Shea Stadium in 1966 you can here that the screaming is incredibly over powering.

This is when the Beatles decided that instead of giving a substandard performance due to the distracting screaming they would film a video of them playing their song and distribute it around the world so that their fans could still appreciate their music and see them. This was with their single "Paperback Writer"- The first music video. 

Music Video- An Art Form

Queen- "Bohemian Rhapesedy"

In 1975 Queen released their song "Bohemian Rhapesedy's" which experienced some small success. However the real point of note about "Bohemian Rhapesedy" is video which created a new found success for the song. This was a real milestone at the time as it was the first music video directly affected the sales of a song. This created a new found industry in making music videos as corporations found that a good music video could increase sales drastically. Another reason that "Bohemian Rhapesedy" is so influential is due to the standard and creativity of the footage in the music video. It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before in a music video. It was considered a real piece of art which has lead to more creative and inventive music videos.

Bohemian Rhapesedy

Thriller

Micheal Jackson was well know for making a spectical of his music videos. They were mini movies in their own right and incredibly creative and atristic. They were also vastly popular - the most popular and expensive to make was "Thriller" which is regarded as one of the most famous music video of all time. "Thriller" was so popular that it was released in cinemas and sold on video so that fans could fully enjoy the video.

 Here is a mini documentary on the making of "Thriller"

Album Art

In this task I used random generators to give me a band name, a song title and a picture. I then had to use these to create an album cover. 

The band name that I generated was : Black River.

The album name that I generated was : All the lies we tell ourselves.

And I decided to generate two images as I wanted to combine more than one image to create something more interesting.

The first image I generated was of a double exposure of someone walking up some steps into foliage. High contrast bright colours: reds, yellows and greens. 

The second image I generated was a spider web so I decided to use the magic wand tool to cut the spider web out which I planned to overlay on top of my first image. 

Then I increased the brightness took the contrast down and increased the gamma to try and replicate the colour scheme from the first image.