Music videos and Producer’s Strategies

Music videos are also made as part of an overall strategy to help promote an image and develop the career of an artist. I have already posted about why music videos exist, why Blink 182's All the Small Things is a good case study and what videos are tied in with films. Now I will move on to producer's strategies.

The major labels can have very different strategies for their artists than the independent labels and then there are those artists that do not have a record label and are forced to self-produce their own music video in order to increase their presence on the internet and perhaps even television.

The major labels often have the strategy that they wish to create a very specific image of their artist in order to maximize their appeal to the target audience. Look at any pop group and their music videos will contain choreographed dancing, the latest fashions (and lots of costume changes) and a whole range of other elements that will make the artist look rich, sexy and successful.

Looking at the early videos of Eminem is interesting. My Name Is was the first major single. It features Dr Dre which helps to establish Eminem as a new and ‘cool’ hip hop artist. It does everything it can to make Eminem into an icon. He dresses up as Bob Hope, Marilyn Manson, and the President and appears in set ups that make him look like a TV star of wholesome shows like The Brady Bunch. It sets him up as a pop icon that will subversively attack all that is ‘good’ and ‘clean cut’ in pop culture.

 

His next song, Guilty Conscience, and the video for it, made Slim Shady look like the devil compared to Dr Dre’s more even tempered, sensible and wiser gangster rapper. The first music video off his following album, The Real Slim Shady, attacked and parodied a huge range of pop stars. The strategy is clear; make Eminem appeal to pop fans by putting down his competitors and still make him appeal to hip hop fans by his rude, aggressive attitude. His video for Lose Yourself featured clips from his starring role in the film 8 Mile and helped promote his film and the 8 Mile soundtrack.

The Prodigy are an excellent example of a group that have had a much more independent spirit in their music videos and career. They were on independent label XL Recordings for much of their career and recently moved to Cooking Vinyl, another independent label. Their music videos have often been very dark and controversial and they ensured that people would see them by refusing to appear live on Top of the Pops when their singles were in the charts.

A fairly early example of their music videos is Poison which features the group members performing in a small dark room and eventually becoming caked in sloppy dark filth. The music video is cheap and simple but also sells the image of the band as something different, edgy and dirty. Their later video for Firestarter, all filmed in underground tunnels in black and white, was considered too scary for children and some channels would not show it until after the watershed. All their videos paled in comparison to the video for their most controversial song Smack My Bitch Up. This video was banned from television and after huge public demand, MTV agreed to play it only after midnight. It contains drug use, violence and a very explicit sex scene but does not feature the actual group at all. It is a shocking example of an artist seeking publicity by courting controversy and determinedly positioning themselves outside of the mainstream, despite their success.

Some artists will self-produce their own videos with or without the backing of a record label. Forever the Sickest Kids put three months of hard work into a stop motion music video for their song Crossroads. Ed Sheeran gained huge exposure from the simple video filmed for SBTV of his song and performance of You Need Me, I Don’t Need You.  

Perhaps the greatest example of what a home made low budget music video can do for a band is OK Go’s A Million Ways that simply has the band perform a choreographed dance in a back yard. The video went viral, becoming an internet sensation and hurling the band into public recognition and popularity.

All the videos mentioned are below and are good examples of how music videos can be a part of a producer’s overall strategy for an artist.

Purposes of music videos: Blink 182 and All the Small Things

After last week looking at why music videos exist, my students will next be looking at examples and explaining the purposes of music videos with references to examples. In order to help them I have written a short piece on Blink 182's music video for All the Small Things.

The music video for pop punk band Blink 182’s All the Small Things features the three piece group lip synching to the song, playing their instruments in front of adoring fans and engaging in a range of activities that parody the conventions of boy band music videos.

It is an excellent example of a music video that promotes an artist and their single for a number of reasons. Firstly and most blatantly, the video features the words Blink 182 and their logo in many places; on the side of a private jet, on many of the fans’ signs and even on a band member’s arm. This keeps the artists name in viewers’ heads as they watch. It is also an example of Blink 182 making themselves stand out from their competition. As they are a pop-punk band, they have to compete for single and album sales with other pop artists that include boy bands who were popular at the time such as Backstreet Boys and N-Sync. They do this by parodying conventions of boy band videos such as having water poured on themselves while posing for the camera, having a private jet in the background and performing choreographed dances in matching white suits.

The video would also help promotion by being positioned in the right place so that the target audience can find it. This means it could go on rock channels such as Kerrang and Scuzz but also on the pop channels like MTV to ensure it reaches a wider audience than just rock and punk fans.  The video would also be able to be viewed on various internet sites such as YouTube, thus extending the number of outlets the song can be heard in, and is also available on the Blink 182 DVD called The Urethra Chronicles. By selling this DVD, the record company and artist can all make more income from the music video. The adverts before the video on YouTube will also raise a small amount of income.

The music video is also a part of the record label and artist’s strategy for creating a popular and recognizable image for the band. Blink 182 are known to be a playful, silly and immature pop punk band that will appeal to teenage boys as they sing about troubles with girls, being immature and having fun. They will appeal to teenage girls as they are fresh faced, good looking guys who sing occasionally about love and relationships but usually in a silly, sweet and harmless manner. This video helps Blink 182 appear as funny and light-hearted and not afraid to mock their own image as well as that of their competition. While mocking other boy bands, it also establishes Blink 182 as a band with a major label behind them that has the money to invest in quite a high budget video that features lots of extras, different locations and even a private jet in it. It also ensures that the audience can see the band playing their instruments and looking like a typical rock band.

Their other videos including M&M’s, Dammit, The Rock Show and What’s My Age Again? The latter two feature the band running naked through the streets and literally throwing away the record company's music video budget. All confirm the band’s image as fun loving, silly and immature; everything the target audience of Blink 182 and pop punk would want them to be after hearing their songs. Watch the videos below:

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Why do music videos exist?

Here is another post for my BTEC Media students as I am starting a new unit with them on Tuesday called Music Video Production. The first assignment is to explain the purposes of music videos. Here's a post to help them get started:

Without music videos, what would we watch while listening to music? Arguably we don’t need to watch anything at all. Music is for our audio pleasure not visual pleasure. But music is also a performance and from the very beginnings of humans making music, there would have been something to watch as we listened. We can’t all go to gigs every day and experience live music with an artist performing in front of us and similarly artists can’t just depend on live gigs for income either so they record their music and hope to sell it in the form of CD’s, vinyl and increasingly digital MP3 downloads.

In order to sell their music, artists need to promote it. They can do this through touring and interviews and typical forms of advertising such as posters and adverts in magazines but they can also get their music to be heard through a huge range of outlets by the use of a music video. Traditionally music would have been heard live but then with the invention of the radio and vinyl, recorded music could be listened to by music fans almost whenever they wanted. 

 

With the introduction of television, there was another outlet for music to be heard. However not all artists could play live on television all the time so the music video was invented so that recorded music could still be played on television but the audience would also have something to watch. Shows like Top of the Pops popularised the use of the music video and nowadays there are hundreds of music channels across the world, some even exclusively playing music videos. Then video and DVD came along and artists started selling collections of their music videos alongside their albums.

Most recently the internet has become the most common outlet for music to be heard and music videos are therefore available on a huge range of websites, most notably YouTube. Artists and songwriters and the record labels that represent them can all even make some money out of advertising revenue when people stream these videos online. Read more about how YouTube views can make songwriters money here. The risk is that people can also illegally download these videos and songs and therefore the producers lose potential revenue from single sales.

So a music video is a promotional tool that allows the artist and record label to extend the number of outlets that the song can be bought and heard in. It gives the consumer the choice to see something while they hear the song and can also make the people behind the song some money. Music videos can be dirt cheap but also very costly so advertising revenue is not the only way that they can generate income. As mentioned previously, they can also be put onto videos and DVD’s and sold to make more money but increasingly artists can get sponsorship and product placement deals. Music videos can be filled with conspicuous products and this can make the artist and/or record label a fortune. If the artists use the product, for instance drives the car, makes a call on the phone, drinks the drink or wears the watch, then they are likely to be paid even more than if the product is simply featured somewhere in the background. Apparently, Britney Spears made half a million dollars from the product placement in her music video for Hold It Against Me.

 

Sometimes a music video is tied in to a film release. This can be mutually beneficial for both the artist, record label and the film and its production company. The song features somewhere in the film and parts of the film are featured in the music video. This means every time someone sees the film, they will think of the song (and may even purchase it) and every time someone sees the music video, they will think of the film (and hopefully go and see it or purchase it). This can make more money for everyone involved and is often used for synergy purposes. This is when a company such as Sony that produces both films and music uses the different parts of the business to promote each other. Men in Black for example is a Sony film and the soundtrack featuring Will Smith’s title song is also released by Sony.

 

All this boils down to promotion and increasing sales. While some music videos are far more arty and do not appear to actually promote the artist in traditional ways, most music videos are simpler marketing tools. Major labels put lots of money into producing music videos that will help create an image of the artist that will appeal to the target audience. Independent labels might be more likely to produce more experimental videos for their artists and some artists, often not even signed to a record label, will even self-produce their own music videos just to give themselves a bigger presence on the internet.

Promotion is vital to increase sales and there can be a number of different goals to it. The aim might be to introduce and establish a new product (in this case the artist and their single is the product), it might be to better position the product in the right marketplace to ensure the target audience will be alerted to it and it might also be to retaliate or make the product stand out from its competition.

In a future post I will explore a number of specific examples of music videos in more detail in order to explain further why they exist.

Links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/13/youtube-songwriters-payment-copyrights

http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/the-rolling-stone-blog/britney-spears-made-500000-from-product-placement-in-hold-it-against-me-video.html