Checking in on niche outlets such as the UK's MTV2 and sites such as Video.Antville you would be forgiven for thinking the industry as being in rude health. You'll see a panoply of creativity - a medium and industry that is bursting with new ideas, techniques and talent. Yet scratch beneath the surface and you'll see that the dollar is slowly undermining the good fight. MTV doesn't show music videos anymore - and those they do show are overblown, overproduced mainstream monstrosities. Videos at the low to medium end of the spectrum aren't displaying any hard evidence of driving sales and some say this is responsible for ever decreasing video budgets. Video budgets are stupidly low- to the extent that it is virtually impossible to produce a music vid without calling in favours from every single person on the call sheet and many a blind eye turned at the post house. But what is the root cause of this? Is it that vidoes have lost their value added and promotional punch due to the manner in which we access our media? Or is there a higher cause?
This problem is not unique to music videos. It is applicable to any media that is obtainable as a digital file. Print Media and Music felt it first and soon TV and film will receive their wake up call. Even advertising TV budgets are feeling the pinch with clients increasingly expecting web viral campaigns to be produced with budgets that would make a music video director blush (5-10k).
It's all down to a larger problem. We are no longer accessing our media through controlled and confined sources. This means the numbers of people seeking their media, information or entertainment are being dispersed in vastly smaller numbers across a vastly increasing number of outlets - alot of which provide previously paid for content for free. The money available for producing, marketing, buying and selling this media has not increased and this means everyone is getting a smaller piece of the pie - with the pie becoming a bicycle wheel with ever increasing spokes. Spencer Reiss' wired article discusses how the web fragments our media experiences:
"The Net in particular is brutally centrifugal, fragmenting newspapers into articles, movies into clips, and CDs into songs, all dispersed to servers across the earth. It has never been kind to enterprises that try to gather everything under one roof."
The music video industry is just another victim of this phenomenon. You no longer have sure fire platform (such as the MTV of old) where videos are curated to ensure quality music and music videos are being consumed by large numbers. Even Antville is becoming a victim of its own success, with a new 'monthly faves' posting to help cut through the increasing amount of crap being posted. Blogs such as Cliptip and SRO help...but are also indicitve of the above mentioned fragmentation.
While videos aren't showing any evidence of really driving sales with breaking acts, fans and potential fans (those interested in a band due to any buzz or hype surrounding them) are always on the lookout for material to sate that interest. Bands are still looked upon as 'brands' by the record companies - and as a result they will still welcome any exposure or added value provided by music videos. Their larger issue is download and P2P culture and the fact that their product (the music itself) waltzes straight out the back door and on to the black-market the moment it is produced. I think it is more this trickle down effect of less money being pumped into the industry that is effecting music video budgets rather than their lack of effectiveness as a promotional tool.
I've loved music videos from the moment I saw Thriller as a kid. Fans will always want that extra level of engagement with the musicians they're into. Videos give you an extra dimension to the personality of the music and its creators. When I was a kid, I'd sit there for ages going through the album/cassette sleeves of a new purchase to glom any extra possible info about where the music came from. Kids don't have that hands-on, tactile experience in these digital days - and web content and video will be (and is) the new medium to fill that gap. The moment (if ever) the record companies manage to protect their property with watertight security, the cash will flow back into music videos.
It's a brave new world/the wild west/open season/(insert cliché here)...and who knows how it's all going to pan out. Everyone (especially the trailblazers) is making it all up as they go along. Soon enough, somebody is going to come through with a vision and some killer code that numbers the pages churned out by the printing press. Until then - there'll be wunderkinds who keep on creating masterpieces with zilcho money (and people like us who lap them up) to keep the embers glowing.
2 comments:
I wish my bike had ever-increasing spokes, I had to get them replaced last week.
My own ever-decreasing spokes tale came to an end last week. My dead bike is still chained up somewhere near Ooostenburgervoorstraat. I've had to make do with dinkying Cherribones on the back of her bike everywhere.
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