20th September 2016

Music Video Purposes

1. Revenue generation - how much money you are making.
Music video is part of a marketing strategy - promotion tool.
Is it promoting the artist and single?
Artist and album?

Controversy - causes conflict between different people in society.
Why make a music video thats going to be banned from MTV?
It will promote the song and promotion = profit.
The artist get will get more recognition, become more famous and earn more money.
The record company will make profit from the album sales of the artist.
The music videos can be used to get messages across.

Controversial videos:
Aphex Twin - Window Licker.
Madonna - Feels like for a girl.
Eryka Badu - Window Seat.
Justice - Stress.
MIA - Born Free.
Rihanna - S&M.
TATU - All the things she said.

I think that the most controversial video from the list above is Justice - Stress.

The music video follows a group of young people in France doing whatever they want on the streets. The video shows the boys harassing people on the streets, carjacking and then setting the car on fire. The video received negative responses as it is labelling young people as thugs. The music video features many people with black skin so this lead to people saying that the video was racist. The video received a lot of criticism which caused the public to backlash and then led to the music video being banned from French TV.  Despite people not liking the music video, the song itself received positive feedback. Two weeks after the video was released, the artist Justice released a statement to try and defend the video. They said that the music video was a fusion of art and entertainment. Justice said that their aim was to open a debate and raise questions, which they did.