JV - Essay - Music Videos

“Music videos are simply a tool for promoting an artist”. With reference to two music videos, how far do you agree with this statement?

• In contemporary society, music video producing has changed and is now more focused on the narrative of the video perhaps more than the song/artist itself. This is to attract a certain type of market audience and to keep them watching despite the song and come back to watch the video again.

• Barthes created 5 different codes in which the video becomes polysemic in which the narrative portrays various different meanings which can result in the 5 narrative codes to be implemented into the music videos.

• Enigma codes exist within the media text which makes the audience ask themselves questions about what will happen, the answers can be found my consuming the text. Through this code it promotes a narrative to the video and keeps the audience interested in order for the artist to promote their ideas, furthermore, symbolic codes are also relevant by representing an idea or object. In order to appeal to a wider demographic, cultural codes are implemented this makes the video relevant to a certain market and can attract a lot more fans on a global scale for the promotion.

• Macklemore’s video ‘Can’t Hold Us’, 2011, although contains a narrative which perhaps can be confusing to understand due to the abundance of locations used, there are various references to his album in which he goes around with an American Flag with ‘The Heist’ imprinted on it which is the name of his album. This is a prime example on how artists can use their music videos to promote themselves and their merchandise.

• Barthes came up with the idea of semiotics which means sign which act to signify a meaning which have a single basic or literal meaning which is called a denotation. Different objects for example money or an item of value can be used to convey a certain idea for example wealth. A group of these different meanings combined are known as codes and these three together can portray different ideas which can apply to a certain target audience.

• Women can be used as props which signify something slightly voyeuristic which can appeal to more of the male audience. As the market is very big and a lot of music artists use this technique it can be used to promote the artist.

• Richard Dyer was more concerned about the ‘star image’ which is constructed through a range of materials such as advertising and are also referred to as commodities as they can be bought and sold. The image itself must be incoherent through the use of two paradoxes, firstly being ordinary means that the audience can relate to him through knowing their metanarrative and buying subsidiary media products like autobiographies, gives an insight into their life and will give those more of an incentive to purchase more of their products whilst at the same time promoting the artist. The opposite would the star being extraordinary having a unique aspect about them and having a talent which will inevitably get them recognised, the more orthodox way of promoting themselves in music videos.

• Mumford and Sons are band which have recently become famous due to their amazing singing voices and not because there music videos are voyeuristic or festishistic by recently headline at Glastonbury festival.

• The representations of the different sexes can also be commodified in videos and are used primarily as a sexual objects for the male gaze or female gaze as can be seen in contemporary society. By reaching the younger audience it can promote the artist even more from their video through the use of Web 2.0 and viral marketing which is now becoming a lot more prolific.