A fairly simplistic definition of a music video is a short film, which is set to a particular song (or songs, in some cases), in order to provide promotion for an artist. However, on top of this there are a few more purposes which are universal throughout almost all videos. Researching into these will provide me with a checklist of things to ensure that my music video does when I make it, as otherwise it will not be fit for purpose and thus will not be as affective when I market it to an audience.
1. The video should sell the song, or the album, by providing additional promotion for them which would not be available just by hearing the song on the radio. This can be achieved by having a running theme throughout videos from the same album, for example the colour scheme which the White Stripes have running between videos from songs from all of their albums.
2. To give the listener a better understanding of the narrative within the song, such as in 'Writing's On The Wall' by Plan B, where there is a much more sinister narrative in the video than the audience can grasp by just hearing the song alone.
3. To sell the artist as an individual star as somebody who is bigger than just the song - this is common in music videos which string multiple songs together, such as Tropico by Lana Del Rey.
4. The video could show off the other talents which the artist might have, or activities which they get up to outside of music - for example, rock videos will often show the artist on tour, and pop videos will usually feature some dancing or acting from the artist in order to market them as a star across several different mediums.
5. Several videos have been designed to particularly cause controversy within the wider media, and thus gain fans for the artist from this wider exposure. An example of this was the original video for Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, which was universally shunned for its degrading attitude towards women and use of nudity.
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