The role of music videos in today’s market

In the beginning…

In the 1970s, if you had a band and you were playing your own music, you went out and played gigs anywhere you could to be heard and to be noticed. If you got enough of a following to get the attention of a record label, and they thoughts they could make some money off you, you got signed. The record company would pay for your next album to be recorded, and if you somehow managed to sell enough copies to pay them back, then after a couple of albums you might have seen some money start to come back your way. If you got really good, the tables would turn and the recordings of your music and radio play would cause people to come to your concerts where you could now make a killing on overpriced t shirts, caps and stubby holders.

Fast forward to the 80s and into MTV. Overnight it was no longer enough to be heard on the radio; you needed to be seen on TV to sell albums. And forget miming on Bandstand; you needed a music video! Big budget special effects, blockbuster sets and costumes, sometimes a feature video that would be twice as long as the song. Rarely were these videos actual live recordings. Some were feature films in their own right, some just a single person going for a walk, others the most abstract animation with little relevance to the song at all. But all had one thing in common: they were there to get your attention.

The early 2000s saw the wide spread popularity of DVDs. Ground breaking digital video and audio like we had never seen. By the mid 2000s the music industry were on the band wagon and live concert DVDs were the hit thing. Wait 6 months after your favourite band’s world tour had wrapped up, and you could walk into the store and take the concert home with you. Stadiums, arenas, theatre, you could see what everyone was doing. Your concert didn’t just need to sound great and have great atmosphere - it needed to look good on camera.

That’s where things got crazy. Production got bigger and bigger as everyone needed that shock and awe value to make their product stand out from the 20 other concerts on the DVD rack. Put your money into your DVD, sell your DVD, make your money back on DVD, then watch your pre-sale tickets for your next tour sky rocket. What a time to be alive.

YouTube. Social media. We don’t pay for things now. It should be free, it should be in my hand, and I shouldn’t even have to finish typing in my search before it’s prompted for me and playing while I’m still on the toilet.

Music is streamed off of Spotify with approximately 1 cent in every 4 million plays going back to the artist. Live music venues are about as rare as a pop vocal without auto-tune and every man and his dog has a recording studio at home.

Almost 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day, with 300 hours of video being uploaded every minute. We are flooded with content. Each and every one, fighting to be noticed.

So where does all this leave us? 

To put it simply, the people genuinely want to see bands, they want to see who they are, what they’re about and what they are doing. But they’re not going to pay for it. You need to provide this content to be relevant and you are not going to earn a cent back on it through sales.

In a world where U2, Taylor Swift and JT are standard in what a live concert can look like in your living room, you need to face facts that you are not going to impress anyone with your stage show either.

It’s time to think outside the box. Stop trying to impress your audience, and start trying to connectwith them.

Simple tips.

With this in mind, we need to shift our focus. If we can no longer sell videos, then we need to treat them as promotional material. This tells us a few key points straight away.

·      Duration. Short, sharp, attention grabbing. You don’t need a 40 song anthology taking people on a journey. You have about 5 seconds to get their attention. The most you can hold it for is one song. So we only need to focus on one track.

·      Promotion leads to sales of something. Strategize your video to either increase demand on an upcoming event, or show off something you have just done. Either way, there should be ticket sales or merchandise on the horizon to get your money back. Be smart about it. Don’t throw up sales in their face at the end of the video. But make sure there is information around for them to find. How do we do this….?

·      Leave them wanting more. At the end of your video, they should want to see more of you, hear more of you. Get them actively looking for you. Searching for your social medias, your website, your upcoming dates. After your video they should not feel like they have seen you, they should feel like they have been missing out. Now as they look for you, they find the information that leads to sales.

So what should your video look like? 

It should look like you. Connect with your audience. Don’t hide behind a clever animation, a dramatic performance by actors. Let your audience see you. Communicate the message of your music directly to them. A clever video is only going to leave your audience wanting more videos, not wanting to come and find you live.

You can do this by performing to camera, if your music is a small intimate arrangement, this could work well. Maybe a stripped back performance of your normally bigger arrangement? Either way, set a scene, set a mood that supports the message of your music without getting in the way of the connection you are trying to build with your audience. Think location, think lighting, think camera angles. Get their attention.

If your music is a larger arrangement which normally goes for shock and awe, be careful. Remember the biggest most impressive stage shows in the world are cued up next on the YouTube playlist. Instead, look for intimacy and exclusivity. A small venue or really cool space. Maybe 50 – 150 people. Put on something cool that your fans wish they had been at. By the end of clip they should be following every social media you have to make sure they don’t miss out on the next time you do this. #Promotion

Of course the other way to approach this is to spend that little bit extra on capturing your big event or concert that you gave been working towards for some time. Maybe you already have a following and have enough ticket sales to put on your big event. Great! You’re 100% of the way to having a great event and 90% of the way to having more promotional material to ensure that your next event is even more popular. Still photography, videography, multitrack audio recording. In the scheme of a big event which is already happening, these extras are money well spent in the interest of creating publicity for your next event.

It may cost you 20% more on this event to capture it, but that could easily lead to much more than 20% growth in future product sales when people see how great your event was. 20% extra on a big event that is already paying for itself is also a lot more efficient that setting up a shoot from scratch and writing off 100% of that money on promotion. Well worth considering next time you have an event where your audio, lighting and staging as already paid for….

For more information on recording solutions, producing and creative directing, feel free to contact us.