The Purpose of a Music Video

The purpose of a music video is to illustrate and add to the narrative of a piece of music. The narrative of the video to a song can add hugely to the deeper meaning of the lyrics by what is going on on the screen.

Musicians use music videos to both give their songs deeper meaning and a visual aid, but also to promote the song and/or the band. Big channels on the TV will only play songs with a video attached to it, so it is worth the bands while to make a video in order to get it featured on the TV and increase their audience number and publicity. The added publicity will increase the word of mouth and the band will have a higher chance of making money. So, creating a music video is a good investment for the band to promote themselves as a way of entertaining an audience.

For example, in Paramore's video 'Decode' which was made for the film Twilight, much of the focus was on the main singer Hayley Williams in order to promote their band.