Are You Ready Yet, Ready for What? To Compete In The Music Competition : The public and music audiences love video. Fact! They do not always have time to read through a lengthy product description when they would rather watch a video which tells them more than words possibly could – A picture is worth a thousand words. Forecasts predict that online video consumers will jump to 1.5 billion globally by 2015 and therefore videos are very important in the marketing of music.
Businesses and production teams often use videos to improve audience engagement. Videos can also help bring in traffic now that different search engines have started ranking videos from YouTube and the likes of Vimeo in their results pages. Videos are fun for both the music industry and its audiences. How many times has a friend or family member sent you a link to a video, as compared to an audio file alone? Now think how many times your friend or family member has linked you to a product description or similar. It’s easy to see that video is a great way of marketing a product and in my eyes, although it’s a bold statement, the music industry would not be where it is today without videos.
Consumers from the pre-video generation will often complain that the use of video is distracting – it leads the audience to focus less on music and more on irrelevancies such as the hairstyle or appearance of the singer. This means that a song may not just consist of the initial idea of the writer, but this is actually supplanted by the imagery which may be included in the video. However, as time goes by it seems less likely that the audio and visual media are ever likely to become separated out again.
So why is video so important in the marketing of pop music? Here are some of the reasons why they are so vital:
– Videos are able to attract wider audiences to a product.
– Videos are easy to watch and less time-consuming. They are also very easy to share which once again can attract wider audiences.
– Some videos can be fun and enjoyable to watch and some have very serious stories with a background.
– Listening to your favourite pop star sing is brilliant but video allows you not only to watch their music videos but also to watch live performances from festivals & concerts.
-Video may be used by marketing agents to sell their products or ideas almost subliminally, thus encouraging them to support the promotion of tracks which will help them advertise their wares. This may seem repugnant to the purists, but both musicians and artists have historically worked under various types of patronage, and it is unrealistic to imagine how music would develop without this type of commercial support.
In my opinion, video has become a massive part of marketing and promotion in the pop music industry and this situation seems likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
