Music Videos
A music video is a video that accompanies a single released by a band or an artist, it usually shown on Television or released online on a video sharing website. They are created in order to attempt to boost sales of that single or get a point across about a certain subject. As each music video is different, as it depends on the song that it is accompanying or the style of the artist(s) singing it, they all have different story lines however, in most music videos, you will find:
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The Song that the artist(s) are releasing
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A story line to the song being released (sometimes explaining, the lyrics of the track)
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Label/ Cooperation that published the video
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The actual artist(s) appearing in the video (this isn’t always the case, sometimes it is just a story with actors rather than the artist themselves)
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Product Placement (They may be because that they are being sponsored by the brand or vice versa)
What Is a Music Video?
What Research can be done into a Music Video
As I previously mentioned, a music video is mainly created to either boost sales of a particular sales or to get a certain message across to the viewers of the music video, therefore, in order to create a successful music video, it would be beneficial to do some research into the music video industry because unlike both Digipaks and AMA, people can support a music video based on it’s on content or the song behind it, without being fans of the artist behind it. We can do both Quantitative and Qualitative Research by just studying the Video that is available on YouTube.
However, a method of research which is not likely, to help when creating a music video is Primary Market Research, the reason being is that as the market is too big, it would be difficult to find a small sample of people willing able to answer questionnaires or phone calls about, who watch music videos and of the same target market that we would be aiming for. As I mentioned previously, it would be expensive to print out, extremely time consuming and would be a waste of valuable resources. Whereas, it would be easier to look up reviews of what people thought of published music videos, which would be secondary research.
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When making a music video, it is known that the music Video is created after the actual music is being recorded, and therefore, the video is based around the nature of the actual music. In this case, we would know the music genre, in order to get the style of the video fitting with the track, it would be beneficial to do some Secondary Research by looking at previous music videos that fall into the same genre of music that we’re aiming to release the video in or to look at previous music video’s released by the artist that is producing the single and has produced other music videos in the past, by doing this we can understand the style of how the artist had previously done their music and follow that sae style when releasing an upcoming one. We can view these videos online, via YouTube or Vimeo or on Television, on TV channels that are dedicated to showing Music Video all day, such as MTV or on Channel 4 Music, where there a variety of videos that can be watched, in different segments either dedicated to the Artist Career or a particular genre of music that is “popular” such as Pop or Rock. This can help provide inspiration when creating your own music video.
We can do Quantitative Research by looking the number of hits on a single Video, this is good, as it gives us a detailed account of how many people globally have watched the video on this website. We can also see on the same page, how many people have disliked/likes the video and any comments they wish to add about the video above, this provides us with qualitative research and shows us the public’s personal opinions, including what they liked, disliked and what could be improved. These can both be used an advantage when creating a music video, however, it would be difficult to know through quantitative figures and facts if those were being biased and just watching the video to see their favourite artist(s) or just because of the nature of the video itself. Therefore, we would have to find the comments more reliable. This is also a form of audience research based on who we are making the video for, and the target market that will be watching the video the most.
Above is a typical music Video. Gangnam style by PSY happens to be the most watched music video in the internet with over 2.5 billion hits. As well, as it's currently the most liked video online, with over 11 million likes. You can also see the comments section below the video. And those who disliked the video. This is what atypical YouTube page looks like.
Different network branches where music videos can be watched and analysed, they can also help provide unlimited inspiration as to how you can design your own music video. These platforms show music videos 24/7 and are free to watch.
Another type of method that isn't likely to work when researching into this industry is product research, although, it would be helpful to actually look into the costs and expenses that create music video. However, product research is only really done to test out new products that are tangible and can be bought in a shop such as food, clothes, electronics etc. Therefore it may seem unnecessary to hold a focus group or administer an online survey, as it could be expensive, and we could get to many responses that we would have to comb through. Therefore, the product research would be time consuming and relentless. Furthermore, the information that we would gain would not be applicable to the industry that we are researching into, as we would be have to gain information of customer opinions on the single, the singer itself, or the singer’s previous music videos as the muisic video wouldn’t have been created yet.