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COMMENTS

Mac McCaughan, cofounder of Merge Records, label behind such indie rock darlings as the Arcade Fire:

"The bands we work with, we never recommend that they make videos. I like videos, but they really don't sell a lot of records. What really sells records is touring – and artists can actually make money on the tour itself if they keep their budgets down." [Source: Wired]

While certainly a pervasive and emblematic symbol of both musical and pop culture, it's easy to forget that the only reason music videos developed and blossomed was because they were deemed profitable. When MTV debuted in 1981 it essentially positioned itself as a large, nationwide radio station. If the record labels wanted exposure on America's (soon: the world's) most popular radio station they needed videos. In many ways early MTV was nothing revolutionary: it simply transferred the established radio business model to a new medium, and it was only a side effect that this developed into the very special and very unique art form we came to know as the music video. Unlike the radio single a music video required additional cost beyond that of producing the album itself, but the idea was that the music video would cause enough record sales through MTV exposure to recoup video production costs. However, while this marketing logic is fairly simple the science backing it is largely imperfect: I don't think any record company has ever taken two similar bands and had one do a video and one abstain and then note the results (and even if they did it would be hard to generalize to yet other bands). At any rate videos were seen as promotional, much like everything else in the music industry: a tool to spur record sales, nothing more. And while the videos themselves steadily increased in complexity, extravagance, and thus cost as they fought amongst themselves for attention, they still differed very little from the promotional posters you see plastered on construction walkways and abandoned buildings as far as the accountants were concerned.

Recently the music industry has seen dramatic changes that have begun to shake the very foundation of how the music industry does business. Simply, this shift can be attributed to advances in technology and distribution channels. Album sales have been declining over the past decade, both due to the ease to which albums can be stolen electronically and to the glacial pace and stubborn attitudes that the labels themselves have exhibited towards these new technologies and distribution channels. If history is written by the victors, it has been the technology companies such as Apple that are writing the music industry textbooks as they use music to achieve massive profits while the record labels deal with corresponding declines. With this sea change in the profitability landscape, the record labels have begun to take a new tact. This new age of the music industry of is one of effeciencey and lack of excess. Extraneous costs are cut and profits are maximized. No bloated tour budgets, no outrageous recording expenses, and, apparently, no videos.

The term "loss leader" becomes an important one when discussing the state of music and music videos. In business a "loss leader" is something sold for little to no profit that gets you into a store so you will (hopefully) buy other, more profitable items. 30frames points out that music videos used to be a loss leader for albums, but now albums have transformed into a sort of loss leader for other revenue. Most recently the music industry has turned towards licensing, content partnerships, and essentially extortion to derive a revenue stream from the music they own. So if albums are becoming a loss leader, where does that leave the music video? Having a loss leader for a loss leader is something you do when you want to go out of business. Music videos were never really designed to make a profit in and of themselves. Some point in the music/music video chain needs to involve a kid giving his hard-earned cash to a white man in a suit, otherwise the old system on which the record labels have relied since inception is broken. Right now, quite frankly, everybody else is drinking the record labels' milkshake.

The problem facing record labels in the information age, whether they be one of the four dinosaurs or a small, seemingly noble outfit like Merge records, is how exactly to translate a good song into profit. The solution, in a time of declining sales, is not to "sell more" but to "spend less". MTV the multinational radio station no longer exists, and thus justifying a big-budget music video is no longer the no-brainer it once was. Sure there's still a chance you can get your video on MTV in some fashion, but it's a lot harder and the exposure is a lot less centralized (aka 1/3 of your video will play split-screen over the credits for the Hills). And while the internet aka YouTube is supposed to be the savior of the music video, that particular avenue is thick with potholes and lanes closed for construction. Sure you get distribution to billions across the globe at little-to-no cost but what you lose is any sort of of concrete business model aka that damn profitability thing. A few million youtube hits certainly make a powerful case for exposure, but even the Google hasn't exactly parlayed that beyond basic hit revenue. And then, of course, there's still the problems of piracy latent to all things world wide web.

So the questions remains: what's the point of making a music video?

I think to the artists music videos are status symbols, the musical equivalent of spinning rims on their escalade. If there was some sort of MTV Cribs of the Mind I can just hear a member of the ThreeSix Mafia claiming "You're ain't no real baller unless you got cho'self some music videos, ya' heard?". It's something the artists they looked up to did and it's thus something they feel necessary. Just like publicists, stylists, hype men, and all the other industry excesses that are increasingly being pushed to the wayside. And I think the labels are still somewhat satisfied to indulge this excess as to the label a music video still represents some sort of potential exposure, following the old MTV formula or maybe some newly modified but flawed "YouTube hits" formula. Many of the music video producers and directors I've talked to can attest to the increasing importance of YouTube hits to the labels in relation to music videos.

But I think the financial failure of the music video is a uniquely label-based failure. Some clever suit needs to sit down and figure out HOW to turn the music video into a revenue machine. Somebody needs to figure out how to make music videos a profitable and self-sustaining member of the team. It seems to me that a big chunk of profitability in music is increasingly derived from licensing and publishing. Music videos, on the other hand, are seldom licensed (at best they are copied) and there's no real equivalent of publishing in the music video industry. This needs to change, and it may require something drastic. Until somebody can figure out a way to take a music video and base a video game on it or use them in movies or television, I just don't seem them sustaining as a commercial endeavor. Why aren't music videos showing up in the background while I play Guitar Hero or Rock Band? Is everybody still stinging from Marky Mark: Make My Video? Why isn't Universal playing videos between segments of the Office? Why isn't Sony playing videos along with trailers before their movies? These companies complain about profits but they refuse to sell their damn product. I thought "corporate synergy" was suppossed to be a big deal?

Despite this, the music video itself is still in no danger of going extinct. No matter the dire state of profitability in the music video industry, they will never go away: some film class will always assign a music video as a project. It really is a great excercise in filmmaking: abstract, no sound, short time frame. And young filmakers with great aspirations of being famous, err, I mean, making great films will always be around willing to make videos to get noticed. If film is in your blood the videos are just going to flow out of you on your way to short films and feature length productions. Music video is high school football, and to some people high school football is a big deal. As the music industry changes around the internet I see music videos becoming less and less official. I won't be surprised to see less label and band involvement. Music videos will be by music video fans for music video fans. Will these videos sometimes get co-opted by the band's themselves resulting in a small bit a fame and even money for the producer? Sure. But for the music video ecosystem to support itslelf in any real fashion there needs to be a dependable and fully accountable revenue stream. Youtube and music videos are going to evolve into the same thing: self-made and internet distributed. Nobody is really going to pay for music videos just like people don't pay to look at paintings or photographs or videos of dramatic prairie dogs.

So what's the point of the music video? To answer the question you have to make sure you have the correct definition of a music video to begin with. You have to remember its roots; you have to remember that the music video is a promotional tool. In that sense the the music video is still what it always was: a gateway for music to reach other mediums. And if you look at the music video from that angle rather than the arcane "music on television" definition many are accustomed, things don't seem so mysterious and dire. It used to be the television that was the optimum medium jump but the television isn't the golden target it used to be as our collective eyes and ears have moved on. Video games, for example, are a solid target with a rapidly expanding fan base. The internet is currently the holy grail of targets, but it's so vast you need to work really hard to figure out the where and how before you can even get to the main problem of profitability.

Internet distribution? Video games? Put it together and you just might catch a glimpse of the future, a future Merge Records and the Arcade Fire saw coming before anybody else. A future where the line between directors, designers, and programmers is blurred. A future that challenges the definition of "video" in "music video." The thing to save music videos, just like music, might be letting go of the past and embracing the future.

Mac McCaughan:

"At this point I feel like videos are great for the web, because the web wants content. But it's not something that's going to make anybody any money... It's not worth, for most bands, sinking any money into that. That means there's a ton of content, but most of it... your fans find it, but it's not going to expose you to a bunch of new people on the web."

In 2007 The Arcade Fire and Merge Records released a video for the song "Neon Bible" off their album of the same name. The video is an interactive, Flash-based experience similar to a video game with no real goal. The video received many accolades, including being listed as the fourth best music video of 2007.

The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible (interactive video). Directed and programmed by Vincent Morisset.

[This article, and lots more related to music/video/technology, can be found at Shots Ring Out]