What is the purpose of a Music Video?

After analysing some music videos I started to wonder why they are so necessary for an artist's publicity...

In contemporary society, a music video is expected when a new song is released- especially in the charts, and this is because we are conditioned to the visual image being a part of our everyday lives.
Music videos are, above all else, about the audience relating to the artist, so a basic connection is established.
However, videos these days are more about expressing emotions- or an idea/concept, than the actual music being sung by an artist.
The influx of "celebrity singers" such as Lady GaGa and Katy Perry use their videos to create their indivual images and they represent the freedom to express opinions. Lady GaGa has been a major success and has become an icon for some people. This has been made possible because of her image being portrayed on the media, in her music videos and her presence on stage. However, out of all these media forms, the most significant are her controversial and influencial music videos. Whether you like her or not, her videos do create reactions when they are viewed.

So Music Videos are really fundamental to the artist's image, and it makes the audience view the artist in a different way because they are structured to persuade us to think we are seeing the artist's creative input- basically the artist is representing themselves to us. This is not true in all cases, not all artist or bands have put their own creative input into the videos, but some have and this makes it seem admirable for a fan of the artist.
There are different forms and conventions of music videos depending on what sort of genre the music is. Having said that, some music videos diversify themselves and take on visual imagery in their video that you wouldn't necessarily expect them to, and this usually tends to be music which has a mixed genre, for example Bob Sinclar's "Rock This Party"...

Another artist which mixes the genres he works with is Kevin Rudolf, he has worked with Lil Wayne in the past and produced the song "Let it Rock"...

Out of the few exceptions... most music videos are portrayed typically to the type of music they are representing and we can find ourselves stereotyping certain genres such as...

R&B- which usually includes lots of naked women dancing provocatively around the male singer. This genre can also contain the likes of Beyonce and Ciara...

Rock- quite dark, settings/costumes, scary and intimidating...

Indie- Can be random, usually portrays a certain type of group of people e.g. geeky nerds...

Pop- Usually includes girl bands/boy bands. A lot of singing to the camera. Cheesy songs. But can also be used to describe dance music cross-overs e.g Lady GaGa and the music of Justin Bieber...

Dance- Is one of these genres which are diversifying a lot, R&B singers like Neyo and Kelly Rowland are using the dance genre in their new releases. DJ David Guetta has been at the fore-front of these changes, his tracks usually bridge the gap between R&B artists and the dance genre.

There are also different genres of music videos and they fit into these three categories...
1. Performance
2. Narrative
3. Concept
However, music videos could feature more than one of these genres.
Take Lady GaGa's and Beyonce's "Telephone"- A mixture of narrative and performance


So, I have discovered that Music Videos are used as a tool for connecting with the audience, branching into film-making (Telephone by Lady GaGa has a cinematic theme), exploiting the type of genre and also mixing up genres to become more dynamic (Bob Sinclar), and it is used to advertise a type of lifestyle (Rap videos- all about the money, the girls, the power), or even clothing such as nike shoes or mobile phones- music videos are used to influence the audience in some cases, but it can also be used to convey an idea or attitude and this can be political e.g. Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care About Us" music video.