What is the Purpose of a Music Video?

This is the question we were asked in lesson after we'd completed our lip-synch task.
We came up with some ideas of our own and put them into a mind map.
These are the ideas we had for this question 'what is the purpose of a music video?'

• To reach a wider audience, for example; of those who like films/videos and try to advertise music to them. 
• To advertise products visually, e.g. clothes, make-up, games, CD's, phones, etc which can be included in the music video as props and costume. This is often known as synergy.
• To combine the work of two creative arts, which may mean more jobs for people involved in the media industry or just create a more dynamic way of listening to music.

We explained what we knew already, but then we were given a set of theories devised by the following four people:

Adorno:

Born in 1903, Adorno's theory about the purpose of a music video

was that cultural industries produce a mass of products that have replaced key art forms which might lead people to question social life. Adorno suggested that the culture industry has created and promoted 'false needs', and to such an extent that people's 'true needs' have been replaced.
He's basically saying that audiences are being manipulated to purchase products that they don't need and that they're in a spiral of false socialism.






Dick Hebdige:

Hebdige is a more modern theorist who is on the contrary to Adorno's theory. Hebdige argues that consumption is an on going process which can pursuade audiences in  their social life to change, but not be entirely manipulated into buying products. Hebdige says that people still have there freedom to refuse large companies and form their own subcultures. However other companies can adapt to the audience's subcultures and sell products that they will consume.









Keith Negus:

Negus has come up with two distinct ideologies as ways of thinking about potential artists within the music industry. Negus has more of an idea about where the music comes from that has shaped a culture of consumerism.

• The Organic Ideology of Creativity

This ideology suggests a 'naturalistic' approach to artists; that their success is in their own talent and skill, who have to be trained by the record companies.
The image of the artists is 'enhanced' by the record company and emphasis is given to the album sales and the construction of a successful back catalogue, which is often aimed at older or more sophisticated consumers.

• The Synthetic Ideology of Creativity

This ideology shows another process with a combinatorial approach to artists and material.
The image of the artist is constructed by the record company before they have been test and tried and will be given time to prove their worth. Emphasis is given to single sales and first album sales. Often aimed at a young audience and mass consumerism. These artists often last only breifly but make a lot of profit in such a short amount of time.

Richard Dyer:

Dyer has written much about the stars in music and how stars have been given their 'image' to pursuade audiences to consume their products.
Dyer came up with a theory involving two key paradoxes to how a star has been channeled into a ever consuming world via magazines, TV, internet etc.

• Paradox 1

The star must simultaneously be ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer, which basically means audiences must find them inspiring, because they are 'ordinary' people who have supposidly 'achieved' so much.

• Paradox 2

The star must simultaneously be present and absent. In other words completely accessable through the media, but also distant so individualys are encouraged to go and see them, e.g. at concerts or other events.