One of the basic issues you have to address if you're making music videos is the perception that they're so, like, 90s, they're just over aren't they?
Ignoring my painful effort at teen skatz, in the era of UGC, where anyone can have a go at a music video with a phone or tablet, never mind a Mac, does the vid retain real cultural cachet? [zeitgeisty?] Is it still the centrepiece of marketing campaigns?
There's no definite answer .. but I'd offer yes and no. The phenomenon of Gangnam Style is a YouTube video phenomenon; the cheesiness of the video, not the song, made it huge, and its monetisation was primarily through the billion+ YouTube hits and all those cover videos. No, because for all the hype Wrecking Ball's nude antics got Mikey Cyrus, its just part of a marketing mix that includes snogging Madonna and anything else that makes her Daily Mail clickbait. At that end of the market, as Elberse's case studies of Lady Gaga and Jay Z (yay, clickbait ahoy!) shows, tie-ins and distribution (often linked) are key, but so is audience engagement, some degree of interactivity with a campaign.
The humble QR code would have had Dennis McQuail, or Blumler and Katz, originators of the uses and gratifications theory, nodding to themselves, thinking just how right they were!
Where I've used the INDUSTRY heading, I'm often reflecting, quite indirectly at times, on the position of video in the marketing mix, and this post, marking the news that Spotify is set to (I'll try to update once news is out) move into video in a big way, is no exception.
By the way, given the apparent shocking outcome of the UK general election (voting count continues today), bear in mind the noise the Tories made about censoring and age rating music video, could develop into rather a major story for the music industry and even prosumers such as yourselves...
