What Is The Purpose Of Pop Videos In The Digital Age?

The primary, main purpose of a music video is of course to promote the artist and their latest single. We are progressing further into the digital age which is having an impact upon what people expect to see within music videos. Narratives are becoming significantly more important, not only in the respect of making your target audience want to watch the video but also making audiences outside of your target audience want to watch it. Artists are always trying to think of new ideas to help them gain attention for both themselves and also their music videos - in order to gain the publics attention they need to come up with new, exciting ideas that make them stand out amongst all of the other artists around.

One artist that is noted for her strange and extravagant videos is Lady Gaga. Her music videos are a mixture of weird and provocative and they are known for creating attention within the public eye. An example of this is when she released the 'Born This Way' video. The video features Lady Gaga

The video contains many strange parts such as Lady Gaga herself appearing as a giant moth and many animalistic movements yet it also features aspects such her dressed in very little clothing and performing provocative dance routines. The video is extremely different from what you may expect to see from other artists - obviously allowing for Lady Gaga to make herself known, whether this be through good or bad publicity, as they say 'any publicity is good publicity'. The only issue with Lady Gaga's videos is that the narratives are often very hard to follow due to the fact that they are indeed so strange. This makes it difficult for the viewers to relate the lyrics to the visuals which can be quite confusing.

Another main purpose of music videos is to entertain the target audience. A majority of the time, you will watch the video multiple times. More so if the story line is interesting or difficult to grasp at first viewing. The benefit of the target audience viewing the video multiple times is that it can influence upon single sales. In addition, when watching videos on YouTube, it often gives you a 'suggestion' for other videos related to the one you are watching. Usually these suggested videos are ones made by the same artist that created the one you are currently watching, thus further promoting the artist and the sale of their whole album.

The importance of music videos are becoming more crucial in the modern society in terms of marketing and promoting an artist, people are able to again access to media on many different platforms - suggestive of the idea that the target audience are becoming more interested in the visual side of music.