Purpose of music video in the Digital age

The main purpose of having a music video is to sell products, its to make the product (the song) more recognisable and well known to people, which they will then buy the product as a CD or digipak. Music videos always market other products too, alongside of these. A songs music video, will be one song of a album, the song could be part of a soundtrack that the song is featured on, if an artist has any upcoming tours then this will help towards any merchandise. Music videos are rather odd, because it allows the audience to have full access of the product for free. When they listen or watch a music video, they already basically have that product, unlike other advertisements and marketing where people see how desirable a product is and therefore have to buy it in order to try it.

Following from digital age, it wasn't a problem to allow audiences to have full access to these products. They use to have specified time in which they could be shown in places, this had to be approved by the record company. Top of the Pops was a weekly TV chart countdown, and these videos would be shown and advertised on shows like this. However, in this day and age, videos still have full access, but they can now be watched whenever and wherever people want to watch them, this is because of websites like YouTube which means people can access this and the videos through the App, the Internet or mobile phones.

This then had a bit of a knock on effect on the music industry as people weren't as likely to physically buy a song copy as that would cost money, and why would people buy a CD if they could get it for free? Record companies had actually attempted to prosecute those who had uploaded videos to YouTube for copyright infringement, however monitoring this is very time consuming and costs money. Sites like YouTube have now become successful, but artist have conditions they need to obey. YouTube allows you to track how many people have viewed these videos as to see how popular they are, or at least how much people are wanting to watch them. Channels who host artists' videos offer links to iTunes, which allows people to download these tracks legally without breaking any laws. Music videos aren't the only thing you can watch on YouTube, TV shows like Britain's Got Talent and X-Factor post videos of acts on recent shows on there in case people had missed the show.

A VEVO had been launched in America for thee major record companies being; Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media. Vevo is linked with YouTube. Google has part shares of the revenue for directing users to the official videos on music videos instead of any copyrighted ones.