The Need for a Music Video

How effective is a music video at promoting your band or music?

Renata Ulman, Executive Producer of ProfileProductions : In this video from YouTube Renata Ulman, from Profile Today, Renata talks to artists such as William Shah (Aka Champagne), DJ Stubbs, Leroy and Bandit. This was a superb source of information because it allowed you to hear from the artist's themselves, so they will know first-hand what a music video does for them. Though the music video is crucial, "it isn’t everything", says Champagne. A music video will go viral on social network sites, which as an artist you will need to be on. Sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have millions of subscribers and if they come cross your page and like what they hear it is a way to broadcast your music freely without going into paying for advertisements. Once you have set up sites like these posting regularly is the next imperative step. People will want to see you’re active and doing things, even if it isn’t posting a music video, uploading vlogs or tweets allows your fans to see you haven’t disappeared and constantly popping up in front of them will keep you in the forefront of their minds.

The reason a music video is one of the most important things as an artist, is because it is putting a face to the music. It is letting your fans see you, and be able to show your personality in more than just a picture. A music video will let you express what you really feel, it brings out the story in the lyrics and what you wanted to represent in the song. It will also more than likely bring in new supporters as a lot of people enjoy visual experiences and will watch music videos rather than just click on a song and listen.

Music videos are not only created to allow the audience a better feel of who the artists are. They are also produced to promote and extend an artist’s income. The reason a music video is able to do this is because it branches out to not only their acknowledged fans but to people who may be browsing sites such as YouTube. They can pop up in advertisements in other videos and also on social network sites. Not only that many music video's now contain advertisements on the actual video generating more money towards their label, which will then be shared out towards their end profit.

2 forms of Advertising in Hadoukens new song Levitate

An example of how a music video helps promote the band and also boost sales is Bullet for my Valentines' – 'Tears don’t fall' (which can be found here). The single was released on 17th June 2006 through Trustkill Records. This was the song that really kick started their career, with over 48,100,000 views, it also won a Kerrang! award for best single. The album The Poison which contains the single ‘Tears Don't Fall’ has sold 1,200,000 copies worldwide and 500,000 copies in the US alone. Compared to their previous album Hand of Blood; this album sold nowhere near as much. The Poison also got 2nd in Top Heatseekers for 2006 and also 2nd in Top Independent albums. There are only two tracks on Hand of Blood that have had a music video made for them which is 4 Words to Choke Upon which has just over 1,300,000 views and the track Hand of Blood which has even less views at only 363,000. The reason I believe 'Tears Don’t Fall' helped their album sales substantially is because once magazines and promoters heard about this track, it became one of the biggest songs of the year, the playability of this track is extremely high. This music video is one of the first I ever saw and will definitely be with me forever. Even to this day, 'Tears Don’t Fall' is one of the bands most recognised songs.

Vevo is a music video site run by Sony, Universal and Abu Dhabi Media. It was launched in December, 2009. VEVO's concept is that it hopes to attract more high-end advertisers and thus meaning more notable artists will use them to promote their music videos. What VEVO also does is censor content such as explicit behaviour and language so that the videos are more acceptable to advertise to partners.

VEVO has a main YouTube channel which you can find here that posts tracks, interviews and news about bands that go through them. VEVO then splits off into personal channels for single bands. This then gives the ability to subscribe to certain band, so you know you will only receive content from that specific band. There isn’t just music though, there are 'making of' videos, interviews and news about the band. It is a great place to subscribe if you are interested in that artist. Earlier I talked about the band Bullet for my Valentine here is their VEVO channel. One reason a band may choose to go through a site such as this, is so that they have a big company attached to them and can be advertised to a whole range of new people.

“Synergy is the working together of two things to produce a result greater than the sum of their individual effects.” – Wikipedia

When it comes to films, TV programmes and adverts, the music in the background is one of the most recognised aspects of that clip. Especially within adverts, and this is where company’s use synergy so that the video and music can bounce off of each other bringing it too life. For example, if you heard this, what advert would it remind you of? I know that instantly I recognise the advert, but even if you don’t, if you watch television you will know the song, and you will kick yourself when you find out. Here is the advert. It is boots! They use this song in every advert, just with a different style. This is so, when you hear this song on the radio you will think of their brand. I believe this is one of the most recognisable songs for an advert, and once you get that status it is a very clever way to advertise. An example within television is this. Though when you first start to listen you may recognise the tune and voice, but may not know where from. After 40 seconds in you will shout to yourself the program which is of course scrubs! This time it isn’t advertising a product or store but when you hear the song on the radio you’ll think of the programme and want to be able to watch it. Lazlo Bane the artist of the song at the beginning of Scrubs has just under 3,000,000 views on that song, and I’d put money on before the boost in listens from it being in that programme he was under 100,000 views.