I remember the time when VH1 really played music videos. Any music videos I watch are on my iPod, I buy them on iTunes. When music is being given away for free does it make sense to produce those expensive videos and try to make revenue out of them. The music videos, when they first came out and were played on cable, served as marketing vehicle to sell album. If songs themselves are marketing vehicles for artists, should videos be treated as revenue stream?
In a recent interview with USA Today, Universal Music’s EVP Rio Caraeff says,

Clearly, the days of multimillion production budgets for videos has waned, but we’ve been able to do more with less. The budgets have come down, but the creativity has risen. With the challenge of doing more with a smaller budget, some of the best videos have come in with no budget, using Mac computers, high-def cameras and a small crew.

I even envision a world where music videos are created by the fan, and collaboration that exists in a digital, all-Internet world — the artist creates the song, and fans can go online, and make the videos. We’re going to see a lot more creativity. It’s no longer just about one big company publishing, it’s a two-way communication. This is completely new to our industry and something we embrace.

The contrived music videos will no more show up on iTunes or Yahoo!Music. Like classical music, it is now left to interpretation. They supply music, we supply video. I think Caraeff nailed it with this call. Do you?

Technorati Tags: music videos, user generated content, music video democratization

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 8:57 pm and is filed under music, web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.