THE PURPOSE OF MUSIC VIDEOS

TO SELL THE SONG & Promotion for music and Album
The purpose of a music videos in general is to be able to sell the song; originally music videos were adverts for the song itself which will challenge the listeners to go and buy an artist song thereby promoting it, in this present age and time its is still the same thing but the music video has be very good at visualizing in order for it catch the viewer's attention rather than selling the music to them which them makes the music a soundtrack to the video making people buy or download music because of the video which still does the job of promoting the song the disadvantage of this is that as the years progressed the value of music has dropped drastically, its not what it used to be back in the 80's where people will actually buy an album of their favorite artist what we get now are just playlist or a collection of different singles from different artist. Most times after the music video of a song there is an advert that shows viewers where to buy the track either on apple music or they could stream it from Spotify.


PROMOTING THE ARTIST
Another purpose of a music video is to sell the artist, that's why in music videos we see artist present performing in some sort of hyper-reality which is totally far from what they are actually are because they are trying to build an image which we the listeners or their target audience will buy into, for example in most RNB or hip hop songs the artist are branded with luxurious things and women but if we follow their day to day living their lives aren't actually like that we find out that their lives in the music video has been exaggerated to sell or portray a particular image to the listeners or their target audience and this image that they create is what people actually buy into, if Beyonce isn't as glamorised in her music videos as much as she is no one would want to pay and come and see her at any of her shows, so music video brands the artist and promotes them and also creates a public image which the public actually buy into sometimes rather than their music.

For example in the msuic video above we can see that usher has a very large house ith a big swiming pool which is so glamors but in reality his house isn't that big. This promotes the artist as they want to associate with him.

Exposure and Expansion of the Artist
Exposure for any new artist is very important, music videos also serve the purpose of helping the artist to expand their skills and also their audience for example demi lavato rel a song with an action movie sort of music video to it, she has successfully been able to expand her audience to those that like action movies and also she has been exposed to new skills, which will help her in the future, also music video gives artist the exposure that they need once they get into the market.

To sell the song, invoke a reaction from the audience

In some cases, music videos serve the purpose or allows artist to re-brand themselves in order to appeal to a different target audience or expand their target audiences at the same time selling their song

to them, for example Miley Cyrus re branded her self in her music video from been that young respectful country girl to a more urban youth with the will of rebelling and sexual appeals she has done this to obviously re-brand her self and target her new audience as her old audience has grown and she had to grow with them and also to invoke reaction from the audience every was shocked and people spoke about her for weeks and months even till this particular moment people still talk about her been shocked she could make such a very sexual music video which was totally different to what she used to do before.
To give the audience a better understanding of the song

Most of the time music videos are trying to explain the,lyrics of the song in order for the audience to have a better understanding make others been able to relate to the music it self, most of the time the music video reflects the lyrics of the song making the song very literal for the audience or the viewers to understand. In order to achieve these most t music videos use a narrative style of making music videos to do relate to the lyrics there by telling the story of the song in a more visualised way which sometimes is the actual reason why some people actually buy, stream or download a particular song or in rare cases albums.
Product Placement

This is used by many to generate revenue, this is simply the music video advertising certain products which could be used in the music video for example the artist could be wearing a levi shirt in a music video and viewers or the fan base of that artist will want to associate with him by going forward to buy the same levi shirt. In other cases sometimes the product is advertised separately this hapens mostly for indie artist, they insert a link in their videos using youtube annotations and viewers click on that link and it takes them to a website where they can either buy the artist product or other stuff.

A very good example of product placement is beaten by dre, we can see Dr dre wearing the headphones in a music video while writing a song which gave the product a lot of publicity.
Another example is in the video above where we see a beat by dre speaker been advertised.

Promotion of film
Sometimes artist writes songs especially for a film for example Adele's sky fall was used in the James bond 007 sky fall which generated a lot of income for the movie and the artist her self another example is demi lavato's let it go it was used in the Disney animated film frozen. Using songs in films doesn't only promote the artist it also sells the song and increase their fan base for example Adele's sky fall will generally be know as a song for spies so anyone that is into that kind of stuff or is a big fan of spy movies will like ti listen to it and so as Demi Lavato as she appealed to younger audience which ended up dragging a slightly bigger audience as well.


Promote festivals


Music videos are used to promote a lot of things an done of them are festivals, in this present age and time, everyone is into festivals and that is one of the major ways in which artist generate revenue because not much people buy their album and in order the appeal to them they use their music videos to do that creating an image that they would like a more fake reality event though fake they still accept it to be real and for this reason they will buy tickets to tours and festivals of this artist and also not only one artist goes on a tour alone they mostly bring along another artist.



Opens up new market



Music Videos open up new markets for the Artists and Record Companies to sell their songs by using music videos on different outlets.
This increase in outlets such as youtube, increases the amount of people who are likely to hear/see the song and buy it, therefore making it more successful.
PSV GANGAMAN STYLE Is an example of a video that opened up an artist to a new market.

SELL IMAGE

One of the biggest purposes of a music video is to sell the image of the artist, because this is what their target audience buy into, if they have a good image or appealing image displayed to the public this is what they will associate with that is why they would want to come see them on tour or at a festival, in this present age and time people do not pay for music anymore so the only way the artist makes money is by going on tour and without a good image sold to the fans there wouldn't be anyone to come and see his/her show.
The video above sells an imagine of the artist as big spenders going around doing competitions but in reality that is not true.