Is the Music Video Dead? Exploring Its Relevance in Modern Marketing
So, some of the people I dislike the most that do what we all do say that the music video is dead. What are their names, Jesse? David Kiese. Alright, there we go. I’ll put it right in the video. I thought we had to call him like, I thought we had to call him like, Flaming Knees. Is the music video dead, guys?
The Tentpole of Music Videos
What I find interesting is that when you think about a music video, it’s a tentpole. So many artists just don’t even consider its value because it’s been a tentpole for almost 40 years. So when they go, “List of things to do,” it’s just in there. But they never ask the question of like, “What am I trying to get out of this? Where is it going to live? What are the pipes?” And once you start digging into it, artists seem to always come to the same conclusion, which is, “Well, what if I just shoot a bunch of vertical content that is in that quality?”
And they always, you don’t even have to like get them there. They will figure it out on their own when you just question the value of it. So in that context, yeah, I kind of think it’s, unless you have the budget for it and you have an audience that has a demand for it, it’s kind of pointless in terms of marketing and trying to promote something.
Deeper Relationships Through Music Videos
I view it a little bit as like when you put out an album versus singles. The album creates a deeper relationship with the fan on a way that just having singles is not really going to do. Having a video, especially a video that has a good idea behind it, kind of a similar concept. So I think there’s that piece because it can tell your story a lot more effectively usually than sort of a 30-second vertical snippet. But you have to have a story to tell and a good idea and a budget and yada, yada, yada.
And you don’t even really need that much of a budget to do a good video, right? Like we’re making what’s going to be one of the most critically acclaimed metal albums of the year and our video budget is pretty reasonable, like under $10,000, right? And it’s like for like four or five videos. So yeah, so they help create a deeper relationship if you have the ideas behind it.
The Importance of Horizontal Content
And I actually have a video coming out about this tomorrow that you kind of want to blend. I think the other piece is like you need to have some sort of meaningful horizontal content that works on YouTube for a whole bunch of reasons, mainly because YouTube, which is the main music discovery platform for people under 20, if it’s just a static or just the album cover, nobody’s going to engage with that. And YouTube is really important and artists undervalue YouTube all the time.
Follow me on YouTube, Bacon Spitz. And I think it’s really important that we go, “Okay, there’s something there for me to watch.” Again, even if it is just like a basic visualizer or whatever, and visualizers are getting easier and easier to make. I made a brilliant video pointing and nodding at Jesse about this today. Thank you. I thought that was really funny.
Minimum Viable Product
But Jesse, you talk about the minimum viable product, right? And it’s like, we do this with Autumn Kings, a pop rock band I manage all the time, where it’s like, “Oh, hey, what do we do? We have a really good visualizer guy. We pay him a small amount of money.” So even the album tracks, or the sped up version of the single, whatever, there’s some sort of video content there. Or they have clever ideas to help do the video. But you need a horizontal video thing on YouTube, but that’s important. Even if it is relatively lo-fi, the way some of your most effective vertical video can be relatively lo-fi, but go and get 10 million views.
By the time this airs, I’ll have put out a video talking a little bit more about this. But the thing I’ve really come to believe, and I’ve been told by someone that there actually is a media study on this, that since so many people convert from TikTok and Instagram over to YouTube, those people are also looking to continuously see a video when they go there, and that the conversion seems to be better when there’s video. So what we see now is, for example, Shaboosie, Buh Bar, Tipsy, Song, whatever it is, that is him literally doing one take. I mean, he may have done more takes, but it’s one take in front of a green screen, which costs no time to make.
Retaining Attention Spans
So the Tommy Richmond Million Dollar Baby viral song that was number two for numerous weeks is just party pictures with a lyric overlay. I think you need to have that because that is what will retain people’s terrible attention spans these days, and that’s why I think it’s necessary. But the other thing I will say is that, like Matt said, is videos are the greatest chance to deepen a narrative and deepen a relationship, and people stream more of the artists they think about the most. And when you don’t use that opportunity, you’re losing out.
The other thing I will say is whenever we post “Mortem” albums over and over and over again, the ones with videos do get more streams. Now there’s other variables to that oftentimes because they spent more time promoting it, but it does seem to be pretty irrefutable that even, you know, I watched a couple of artists recently put up videos for album tracks that were doing well and turned out to be surprise hits. And sure enough, you see them rise up to the video when you look at the animal.
Memberships and Music Promotion
One quick thing, a lot of what this channel depends on is memberships. And what I do for my members is every week I discuss what’s changing in music promotion – the small tips, the things I’m testing out – and I dissect thoroughly for 20 to 40 minutes an episode the artists who are blowing up and finally getting the fanbase to listen to their music and exactly what they’re doing to do that. So you get five hours of this content for $5 a month. I also answer all of your questions and listen to your music on monthly streams. So if you want to sign up, there’s a link in the description or hit MuseFormationLabs.com for more information on what I do.
Okay, back to the video, Matt. Yeah, I think it’s just a matter of priorities. I think the struggle is that in the list of priorities, it needs to be below vertical content, even high quality vertical content. I struggle when I work with an artist and I don’t know, let’s say they have $20,000 and they’re spending five of it on a music video and a thousand of it on content, right? Like that’s where I struggle with it. But I think that the flip side of that is that when you don’t have that deeper layer of content, I’ve worked with artists that come to us and they have 300,000 monthly listeners and they’re like, “I can’t sell a ticket.” And it’s because they never built anything deeper than just the fly by night viral content.
But it’s a stepping thing. It’s like, you know, you eventually got to get there. But yeah, I think we’re on the same page there for sure. So Jesse, you said something really important just now about like even like the slideshow video. Like we just did that with Autumn and Kings where it’s like essentially a slideshow and then over top of the text just like tells the story of the band. Like we met in the grocery store and then we did this and it’s to like a sort of like hype song. They made that for free just using like there’s so many things you can do that tell the story and also don’t cost you any money.
Production vs. Content
That’s true. I mean, something’s better than nothing. But in my mind, when we talk about music videos, I’m not thinking about that. I’m thinking about, you know, production, earning five grand on something or more. There’s a delineation between horizontal video content, which is I think a little bit of what Jesse and I are saying is the bare minimum and a music video. Yeah, I delineated that thing of like whether we want to call it visualizer lyric videos or what I’m now calling like minimum viable products where it’s just my rule now is six hours, one to two hours of ideation on what will connect with the emotion of the song that you can get done fast. Make it, edit it, post it. And don’t think much more because just like lyric videos when they have are overly produced, I don’t think that you’re rewarded for putting 12 hours into a lyric video most of the time. It’s just it does. That’s not the thing that needs effort.
Just the same way that I think all of us could agree that most artists under a million monthly listeners unless they have the best idea on earth, spending $5,000 on a video with a $10,000 budget for an album is silly. Well, it’s so frustrating too, because when they think about what is going to make a piece of content do well, those rules apply to every piece of content except the music video. That has to be this artistic. If I go and look at the engagement on our music videos versus content, there’s nothing to talk about. There’s no conversations to be had because every content is like, yeah, there’s a narrative sometimes but ultimately it’s sort of lost in the artistic mix. And spoon feeding people the narrative is much easier for them to grasp until they’re willing to spend the time and energy to dissect it.
Art vs. Commerce
I worked with an artist for many years and he super creative, amazing guy, but all of his content was about art versus commerce, which is cool if you are in that world, but it’s not very captivating. And when we put it in content, it kind of worked like short form content. But when he made these music videos, they were so deep and artistic, it wasn’t relatable. And that, you know, I see so many artists spending so much time and energy on that.
Social media marketing for musicians
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