THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

MUSIC VIDEOS

Most music videos are produced by famous directors and record labels. All of the famous artists have the best videos to promote themselves and their music. As much as it shows off the artist it also makes the singer/band and their record label a lot of money, when the music video is good and makes audiences want to watch they will want to buy the song because they can see it visually. It gives their target audience a chance to see them and how they wish to represent themselves or self.

Paul Hunter Mark Romanek

PRODUCTION AND THE MAKING

The first stage of making a music video in the music industry is to choose a production company which they know will produce a good video and be known by the public and well respected. It also includes hiring the crew and building/planning sets. In this stage there should also be ideas and a story board in mind with a structured plan of what they want to happen. This should be discussed with the crew and production company. This could take several months to get right and have several meetings with everyone involved.

At this stage more crew will be hired to help with the production of the video, and then once they know everything is in place, filming will begin. Hundreds of takes will be taken so that they have plenty of footage to work with and create the video. Stills will also be taken and used if necessary. This is probably the most important part of the production process, because if this part goes wrong then the entire video will go wrong and the video may not be made, wasting a lot of money. It is also possible that they will begin to make the video, or even be half way through, and they will not like it, and have to begin completely again.

FAMOUS DIRECTORS

Director X: - Iggy Azalea – Fancy - Drake – Started From The Bottom - Justin Bieber – Boyfriend

Floria Sigismondi: - Justin Timberlake – Mirrors - Katy Perry – E.T. - Ellie Goulding – Anything Could Happen

Francis Lawrence: - Beyonce – Run The World (Girls) - Lady Gaga – Bad Romance - Britney Spears - Circus

BUDGET AND PROFIT

Some of the worlds most expensive music videos come from those who are highly remembered because of them, including people like Michael Jackson and Madonna.

Michael Jackson spent 7 Million US dollars on Scream that was performed with his sister Janet Jackson in 1995. Madonna spent 5 Million US dollars on two of her music videos, Express Yourself and Bedtime Story.

An average music video can vary from $200,000 to $500,000 that was taken in 2010. What come out most of the fee is not the actual filming and what is being put on the screen but everything else that goes on behind the scenes. Although a lot of artists these days are making their music videos with barely any budget at all to either give it that sort of ‘look’ or they just don’t like the idea of blowing so much money on a music video.

Ed Sheeran is a prime example of this, he doesn’t go full out and use special effects and visuals to make his videos look good. He normally uses just him or someone else to use the narrative and uses his surroundings such as local tube stations and local areas.

ACCESSING MUSIC VIDEOS

One of the most popular ways these days is to watch it on YouTube, I find YouTube is very useful as it has almost everything, including the brand new videos. Millions of users watch YouTube as the videos are easily accessible. Another way is to watch music channels on the TV such as; MTV, VIVA, KISS and special time slots when the top 40 countdown and other chart shows are on the TV. Snippets of music videos are shown on adverts between TV shows if it is a new video and they are trying to advertise it.

CRISIS IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

Some of the main issues in the music industry: CD sales are falling at an alarming rate: though digital album unit sales

grew by 5.6 million, CD album sales fell by 12.3 million. So the digital growth was less than half of the physical decline in absolute terms.

Digital singles boomed to 176.6 million, a whopping 56% greater volume than combined physical and digital albums. And yet their value is close to just a fifth of album revenues.

Most importantly of all, the CD buyer is becoming an increasingly rare breed. There are fewer shops on the high street, which is where the majority of CD buyers still buy their albums. HMV – the UK’s leading music retailer by some distance – has been suffering well documented struggles. After HMV shut down all it’s stores it was saved by someone who bought the company out of their debt and managed to get some stores back on the high streets again.

Many people are also illegally downloading songs rather than buying them from iTunes and other music websites on Android phones. People find it easier to just download songs for free rather than spending 89p on a song that actually goes towards the artist and their record label.