Music Video Becomes A Necessity
In the past few months, we’ve used this space to report some sobering news for the music video industry: the proliferation of online platforms, the video iPod and Steve Jobs’ massive licensing of product, and Universal Music Group’s new “pay-to-play” policy. We’ve even suggested that the music industry is in the grips of a counterreformation – a new consolidation of industry privilege after a period of instability. But if it seems like we’re bearish about the future of music videos, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Inexpensive materials and digital processing has made it easier than ever to shoot a clip – and, more pertinently, an increasing number of bands are taking advantage of that ease of manufacture and distribution. Now, more than ever, a musical act needs a video to distinguish itself from its peers.
Perversely, UMG’s decision to begin charging outlets to air its clips reflects a new manner of thinking about videos. No longer content to treat music videos as promotional tools, the music industry is increasingly looking at the clip as a final and salable product. This is, of course, what adventurous directors and indie DVD-makers have been arguing for years: that the clip is not a commercial meant to attract attention to a given performer, but a work of art in its own right. Sheer corporate rapacity might have spurred this transvaluation, but the effect of the change is no less profound because of its motivating forces. The music video, which has been drifting toward full artistic recognition for the past twenty years, has finally taken the place where it belongs – somewhere between the single record and the short film.
Video consumers have also become more discriminating. After years of tight control of narrow playlists by MTV and VH1, Internet channels have blown the doors off of the vaults, and opened the vast catalog of digital video up to general inspection. Websites like Antville.com are distinguished not merely by the number of tough-to-find clips on its server, but by the large amount of genuinely intelligent commentary left by watchers. Websites like Stylus and PopMatters have begun to subject video clips to the kind of critical scrutiny usually reserved for albums. As the audience has grown, it’s become more knowing, more demanding, and more willing to draw connections between music videos and other forms of cultural production.
So artists have become more resourceful – and have learned to do more with less. Some of the best and most-discussed videos of the past five years have been made by independent filmmakers on shoestring budgets. Where it was once necessary to shoot on sixteen-millimeter film – an expensive proposition, especially during editing – digital video now makes it possible for novice and near-novice directors to submit pro-quality clips to major platforms. Meanwhile, band websites and popular outlets like MySpace have begun to incorporate video as a matter of course. It is entirely possible for a group to quickly make a clip, throw it up on a MySpace site, and have it viewed by thousands that same afternoon.
All of these developments are terrific for indie musicians and filmmakers. Yet with opportunity comes a new danger for artists: that of falling behind. There’s now no excuse for an independent band not to make a video. The clip is quickly becoming as indispensable a part of a group’s public profile as is the CD itself. Bands looking for mainstream recognition are going to need a video simply to compete with peers who’ve got one, and who are thus better positioned to communicate their visual images to audiences and industry decision-makers alike. Groups that choose to neglect their video profile are going to be shut out of many of the most interesting distribution channels on the web. As the Internet continues its shift toward a video-intensive medium – and as accessories like the new iPod and other mobile video devices continue to make content portable – listeners are going to be predisposed toward acts with appealing, easily downloadable clips.
We expect labels to recognize this, and to strongly encourage bands to make and market videos as a necessary and regular part of the artist development process. Where a late-nineties band might have considered shooting a clip for the lead single from an album, a late-00s band will have that clip shot as a matter of course, and will most likely have additional visual content linked to most of its other material available for download. Release of “enhanced” music on DVD will accelerate. Indie groups are going to start to get as comfortable with cheap video editing software as they currently are with ProTools and Logic. Increasingly, it’s a matter of survival.