Are Music Videos Facing Extinction?

Free Music Downloads have put the music industry in a cash crunch, giving major record labels less money to produce music videos.  With the likes of YouTube many have turned to low budget videos.
 
Hip hop mogul Kanye West has experimented with has latest hit “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”, featuring White comedian Zach Galifianakis instead of the traditional rapper style music video.
 
24 years ago MTV was born and the music video was king, enabling artists the opportunity to not only market their music but market just about anything they wanted.  Now fast forward to the Internet crazed masses where YouTube.com, iTunes and MTV.com are used to view music videos.

When coming up with a video for Justin Timberlake’s “What Goes Around…Comes Around”  (nominated for several VMA’s including best video)  the director wanted to big screen movie feel similar to Michael Jackson’s 1983 smash “Thriller”

When you are up against the likes of the OK Go video featuring four dudes on a treadmill that was viewed millions on times on YouTube you have to give viewers something to talk about and create a mass appeal that will be shared over and over around the world.

In the 1980’s music video budgets were very large, some in the 2 million dollar range, while other were much more like the estimated 7 million dollar price tag for the 1995 Michael and Janet Jackson video “Scream”.  Timberlake’s “What Goes Around” cost an estimated 1 million dollars to produce – this could be one of the last big budget music videos.

The music industry does not have much money to smack down on music videos – so many artists and directors are generating low budget music videos knowing they have to compete for attention on YouTube.  Simple videos like OK Go’s infamous treadmill video for “Here It Goes Again”, hardly cost anything to produce yet was viewed millions of time over, therefore putting the group on the map making them a house hold name.

More and more bands and solo artists will have a challenge getting their music videos in front of their fans faces – but if marketed correctly a low budget music video could increase their record (or should I say free music download) sales without costing a small fortune.

Tim Somers
MusicHoncho.com