What Makes A Music Video

The purpose of a music video is:

• To promote a band/artist/performer
• Increase awareness, therefore increasing customers/listeners, therefore increasing sales, therefore increasing revenue
• To illustrate a song or add visual reference e.g. "Eminem - Stan"
• Add/show the performers raw emotions e.g, "Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2U"

Also:

• Product placement, one modernday example of this Dr Dre (Beats by Dre) a audio company created by Dr Dre, the products are scattered are music videos from artist such as Will-I-Am, Juicy J and Drake.
• To raise audience awareness, one example of this is the Spice Girls. Before the release of Wanna Be in November 1996 the Spice Girls were not very well known, in their case, the video was a success overnight launching them to stardom.
• Music videos can be a form of creative, risk taking media. With artists such as Lady Gaga with her extravagant videos for "Telephone" and "Starstuck" the music video has allowed her to create her own persona. Music videos are very good at being able to show off an artists individuality therefore making it good way of marketing and this will inevitability increase sales.

How can we tell if a music video is successful?
This is done via a few methods, one way is by looking at video viewing websites such as YouTube and Vimeo. The number of views often positively correlates with how commercially successful a video has become. In addition to that, a video might make the song more popular even if the actual song has been out for a long period of time, one example of this the Harlem Shake, the actual backing tune of the song has been around for nearly 15 years yet it has only recently become successful due to the cross media convergence of recent times allowing to post insane videos all over the internet.
Other ways a music video might implicate on a songs success is via CD sales and Downloads because these are the main import of income from a commercially successful song.