Music Industry

What are music videos?

Music videos tend to be short films bring together a song and imagery, which are created to be used for promotional reasons as well as gaining and maintaining an audience. Music videos are most commonly used as a marketing device for a record label or an individual artist. Music videos became most popular during the 1980’s when MTV based their format around music videos. Before this they were commonly known as “Illustrated song” or “Promotional clip”.

Music videos are generally made by playing the song to the artist or actors whilst on set and having them mime or act to it. This can be done in a variety of different ways, including animation, green screen or on location. The video usually represents what is happening in the song, for example, love songs tend to follow couples breaking up and then getting back together again...
...and songs relating to events such as robbery or murder show the artist in prison with flash backs to them committing the crime...


Although many music videos do not have anything to do with the song, following random themes that mean nothing.

Music videos can be found in a number of different places, on the internet on websites such as http://www.youtube.com/ and http://www.virginmedia.com/music/video/music-video?paid=vm_music_videos  where you can find almost any video by any group in any genre as long as they have published it. You can also find music videos on the television on channels such as “MTV” and “4 Music”. These often have special shows within them highlighting and artists success through showing all of their music videos in a day or counting down the UK top 40 chart whilst showing you the videos to the songs.