The Purpose of Music Videos

Intro:
In this essay, I will discussing the purpose of a music video, and the steps leading up to the release and after the release. The emergence of music videos throughout the past few years has been rapid. One of the main reasons for this is because more artist are creating music videos because of YouTube and how easy it is to access and upload a video. 

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When artists start out, they are usually quite small, unless your parents are famous, like Jaden Smith. Most artist have to promote themselves or get lucky and be picked up by a record label who will promote the artist. The most famous person for this to happen to would be Justin Bieber who made videos on YouTube and was picked up by Kanye West. One way artists can be promoted is by getting an agent who gets them work, for example on TV shows, at festivals etc. One final way artists are promoted is through their image and what style of clothes they wear and what their known for. An example for this would be Lady gaga with the meat dress.

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Producers have certain strategies when it comes to promoting artists. Some of these can be based on what sort of clothes the artist wears and the interests that the artist has. The producers can put things into the music video, like things that he artist is known for, this could be something like a certain type of alcohol or brand of clothes. An artist called Young M.A create a music video for her song OOOUUU which featured a lot of Hennessy. This is both product placement, but also promotes the artist as when people see Hennessy, they think of the song. One final thing producers do to promote an artist is look at the music videos for that particular genre or the artist if they've made videos before and take these into account when creating the video. An example would be for Hip-Hop videos where alcohol, jewellery and good looking people wearing minimal clothes are usually present. 



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When it comes to music, money becomes a big factor. Record labels help promote an artist by paying for their music videos and other things. Before music videos, the ways for artists getting paid was through radio plays, vinyls, CD's and royalties, however the music video offers a new way for artists and record labels to earn more money because of how easy it is to access the videos. Every time somebody looks at the video, or watches an advert about the video, both the artist and the record label get paid. 

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When artists make songs, they sometimes create a music video to go with the song. Something that artists do when they are releasing a video or song, or have already released it is promotion. Promotion can be done in numerous ways. One of them being online. This is usually done through adverts on YouTube videos as this is the most popular platform for people to put music videos onto. Also with YouTube, people can make videos addressing the details of the upcoming video. Another thing online is social media. Things like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat can be used to advertise a music video. Artists can pay for an advert and it will come up and quite a few people's account, this happens quite a lot on Instagram and is put as a sponsored ad. One other thing artists can do with social media is make an account and advertise their music video as much as they like for free. The photo below is taken from an artist called Nav who used his Instagram account to promote his music video for his song "Wanted you" with Lil Uzi Vert.