Research Into the Music Industry

Music videos have become an increasingly popular way of promoting an artist and music sales. Music videos are well known for promoting a certain artist/musician. With the growing popularity of different platforms of media such as MTV, and social media it is crucial that an artist accompanies their latest music singles and albums with music videos, to make more money and gain a certain star image. Some artist choose to make their music videos cinematic, adapting their own style and genre to the music video that they produce. It is important that a musician makes music videos to portray their star image and genre. A popular artist who has successfully achieved their star image through music videos is Lady Gaga. With her crazy ideas, meat costumes, and bizarre narrative, Lady Gaga has portrayed her star images as an energetic celebrity who is willing to break the conventions and boundaries of a normal pop star.
Artists like Miley Cyrus have also used music videos as an advantage to convert her style. After making a new appearance to the music industry Miley Cyrus had to create a different style of music video to accompany her content to gain publicity and for the media to notice her  The process of making a music video can vary. In the present day there are plenty of ways music videos are made, some include animations, some include all performance, and others may include a narrative. Some directors and producers may consider the lyrics of the song as a starting point, and will base the video on the story of the lyrics, however others may be solely narrative.
Usually when creating a performance music video, the song is played so the musician can act out the song, and mouth the lyrics. For instruments, guitarists do not have to play according to the song, however drummers do have to at least hit the cymbals if they want to look like they are actually playing. Various of shots are used to present the band or artist portraying their star image, for narrative based videos, different shots are used to narrate a story. 
Spike Jonze is a famous film director who has directed many music videos for famous artists including Arcade Fire, Weezer and Sonic Youth. Jonze work is famous and successful for the professional cinematography, and quirky style. Jonze quirky image is portrayed through out the videos he has directed.

Ever since MTV was launched music videos have become an integral part of the music industry. As music videos help to promote music sales and artists, it is important that it becomes successful to a wider audience. Music directors, companies and labels have spent mass amounts of money on music videos, for example in 1995 the music video for the Michael Jackson song "Scream" was released with production costs from $7,000,000 to $10,399,914. The music video featured amazing CGI (as it was considered at the time) of Jackson and his sister in a space station, playing out futuristic leisure activities whilst screaming and singing. 

This music video won many awards for best Short Form Music Video at the 1995 MTV music video awards.

Another outstanding costly music video, includes Madonna's "Express Yourself" released in 1989 this video was directed by David Fincher, the director who brought us film such as Fight Club and The Social Network. the video clip was heavily inspired by Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The video production cost between $5,000,000 to $9,129,879. The music video portrays Madonna's star image at the time, which was a crucial part to Madonna's career, as her star persona impacted her popularity and fame. 

As you can tell from watching the video, expensive lighting and camera equipment was used to achieve certain effects.

However other smaller independent bands who do not use high end equipment and CGI, can not afford to make high end popular music videos. Therefore they are limited to popularity, as a successful music video gains popularity from the audiences. Such as A Flock Of Seagulls - I ran. Shot for nearly nothing, director Tony Van Den Ende took fun house mirror, aluminum foil, and a few girls in alien make up, and created one of the most popular videos of all time, which gave the Seagulls a top ten hit and crowned Mike Score as king go the new wave haircut. Advertising the bands star image and persona.

Music videos have become increasingly popular over the years due to the wide availability of accessing music videos. It can be argued that music videos are now arguably more popular than Documentaries and films. As I have discussed, a lot of money is put into the production of making music videos, therefor audiences must be able to access videos as it is the main purpose of producing a music video.