The purpose of a music video

Music videos are used for a number of important reasons. For example, one of these reasons is to sell/advertise the song, and help invoke a reaction with the audience, so it makes them remember the song. This is key as a lot of songs nowadays are mainly remembered because of their music videos, for example 'Thriller' by Michael Jackson is a prime example as it was released in 31 years ago, in 1982, yet the video and song are both still remembered by a large amount of people today, even people who weren't alive when the song was released. A lot of people today use the music video of a song to describe it, if they cannot remember the name when telling people about it. This shows how important the videos are to songs as the videos are very effective at making people remember the song, especially if the video is catchy, like 'Thriller' by Michael Jackson, or 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen.

Famous shot from 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen.

Famous shot from 'Thriller' by Michael Jackson.

They are also used to help give the audience a better understanding of the meaning of the song (if the video is narrative). Just listening to a song is often not enough for somebody to understand the story line within the song, so by having a video to it, it makes it a lot easier to get to grips with it.One example of this would be 'Mirrors' by Justin Timberlake, as by listening to the song without watching the video, it is quite difficult to understand the story, which is about a couple growing old together, but if you watch the music video, not just listen, it is then very clear what the song is about as during the video there are constant relationships between the lyrics and the visuals, and there are frequent shots of the couple as they get older and their relationship gets stronger. Another example of this is 'Writing's The The Wall' by Plan B, as the story line is about a man named Strickland Banks performing at a bar, then cheating on his wife/girlfriend, however this is still quite hard to understand if you listen to song without the video, as there are some links to the situation but not very many. Watching the video to the song helps the audience to understand the story line fully as the video contains frequent lyrics and visual links.

The couple in the 'Mirrors' video when they were young.

The couple in the 'Mirrors' video as pensioners.

Another reason for music videos is to help entertain the audience whilst listening to the song. For example when an artist shows off another talent that he/she has, for example dancing in a routine, acting in the video or directing the actual video. This entertains the audience as it gives them another chance to see the artist doing something other than just singing, as it can help then find out hidden talents about the artist. A good example of this is 'Turn Up The Music' by Chris brown, as all three of the things listed above are included, as he directed the whole video himself, there is a small bit of acting at the start of the full video and he has several dance routines throughout.Another good example of this is 'Writing's on the wall' by Plan B again, as he directed the video himself and he plays the part of Strickland Banks throughout the entire video.