The Music Industry

The aim of the music industry is to make money from selling music products. The product is created by talented composers and musicians and then produced by a record company. It is then  distributed to us in various ways; CDs, Live Gigs, Downloads.

The purpose of music videos is to advertise the music as they are shown throughout the world on TV. There are several channels that specialise in showing music videos such as MTV and 4Music. The music videos aim to persuade the audience to buy the song or album or even the video itself. However, the changes in technology has meant that much music is available via web 2.0 such as YouTube. This means that music companies and artists make less money as their material is available for free online. For example, Warner Music Group has apparently banned my analysis of Madonna's Vogue worldwide, whilst Around The World by Daft Punk has been band in the US. In this way, the music industry is fighting against piracy. None the less, you can still view my analysis of Vogue for some reason, and I also put it on the website Vimeo where it has not been banned. This means that the music industry is making very little of their profit from selling music traditionally. Instead, musicians make a lot of profit from Live Gigs as these are unique and you can only really experience them to the full extent by actually being there. Thus, it is perhaps an aim of music videos to promote the artist's performances and encourage the audience to go and see them live.
One the other hand, web 2.0 is also helpful to the music industry, as their songs can be advertised quickly over the whole world. It also allows fans of the music to collaborate and create more interest in the artist.
So then, why aren't all music videos performance based? Some artists genuinely want to create a piece of art, and some believe that true fans of the artist feel obliged to buy the song properly, which is often true.