Marketing of Music Videos
In this post I research and discuss how music videos are marketed and how I would suggest we would market our own final product
As part of my research, I conducted a questionaire and asked the audience on which platform do they use most frequently to watch music videos, and while most of that audience concluded that they typically view music videos on TV, it is clear in popular culture that digital means such as mobile devices and another other means of accessing streaming sites, namely youtube, are rapidly growing in popularity, due to their efficiency and practicality. This is evidenced through the existence of Youtube's VEVO channels for popular artists, created solely to act as a platform for music videos. Alongside this, music channels on TV are still vastly popular, namely MTV, which has seen decades of iconic music videos displayed on its platform.
When researching the ways in which music videos are marketed, it became apparent to me that creating a promotional strategy is key, and it is important to ask: what is the music video trying to do?
The answer to this could be any of the following:
As part of my research, I conducted a questionaire and asked the audience on which platform do they use most frequently to watch music videos, and while most of that audience concluded that they typically view music videos on TV, it is clear in popular culture that digital means such as mobile devices and another other means of accessing streaming sites, namely youtube, are rapidly growing in popularity, due to their efficiency and practicality. This is evidenced through the existence of Youtube's VEVO channels for popular artists, created solely to act as a platform for music videos. Alongside this, music channels on TV are still vastly popular, namely MTV, which has seen decades of iconic music videos displayed on its platform.
When researching the ways in which music videos are marketed, it became apparent to me that creating a promotional strategy is key, and it is important to ask: what is the music video trying to do?
The answer to this could be any of the following:
- Promoting a music release?
- Promoting tour dates?
- Trying to build social media following?
It is also integral to consider how to approach marketing the music video in its infancy, possibly premiering it at a film festival or high profile event, before releasing on Youtube the following day (this is common if we really look into the release of popuar music videos.) We also commonly see teaser clips promoting the video in the days leading up to release, similar to those used in reference to movies.
Going back to the point of whether TV or online means are more effective for music video release , in defence of Youtube we can make the point that Youtube's TrueView ad campaign is sure to drive meaningful views to the music video in question; as while other sites may be able to guarantee views, they won't be organic, genuienly interested views. Youtube's analytics allow for creators to target specific demographics and campaign your product to a wide audience.
If we then go on to consider VEVO as a platform, while ad revenue is high, only their annotations are shown on the video. This limits the creator in terms of promoting further music, tour dates, merchandise etc, as a result of not being able to add their own annotations. In many senses, VEVO as a platform can be seen as restrictive and possibly wouldn't be the best way to go when marketing our own product.
It is clear that VEVO and Youtube are currently the two dominant platforms when it comes to music video distribution and marketing, there are many smaller but growing networks such as videodetective.com and ClearChannel, but an obvious issue here is their popularity and restrictions concerning the audience that the creator can reach through these means.
With the rise of social media marketing, self-promotion is becoming easier and easier for creators; however it is still often beneficial to hire promotion companies, as a means of getting the music video broadcasted on televison, and placing the video in retail and entertainment locations.
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