Sunday, March 21, 2010

Lady Gaga and the Internet: the Revival of Music Videos

MTV has finally come out and said it - "We don’t play music videos anymore".This is not news to a lot of us. However, just because the music television pioneer is calling it quits, it doesn't mean music videos are a thing of the past though.

As many of you might be aware of (or not), fashionista and current Queen of Pop, Lady Gaga has recently released her much anticipated video for "Telephone". The video, a week after its released, was viewed over 20 million times according to the London Press. With that being said, fear not fellow music video lovers! The internet is here to quench our visual thirst (cheers for YouTube!).



The London Press has brought us good news. Music videos are thriving online - even though they have become "endangered" on television. Vevo, owned by Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media Company (and who also have a section all to themselves on Youtube) has been reaping the benefits. The site, which is solely devoted to music videos, was "averaging 30 million video plays a day and picked up an extra nine million streams each day" after the Lady Gaga video.

Artists and directors (and me too!) are thrilled with this new finding. Rio Caraeff, president of Vevo has come forward to say: "The video for 25 or 30 years has been really pretty much the same, it hasn’t really evolved, then it moved on to the Internet and now its ripe for reinvention”. As the London Press points out, with music videos on the internet, they are no longer limited by the limitations (including time limits) that they would have to encounter when being played on TV.

Is the internet the new new media of music videos? I believe so. Not only do musicians and directors have a new playground to explore, I think this is great news to record labels too. Successful artists, mean successful labels. This is a new way to gain fans and build each musicians image. With the internet, more people can be reached - literally overnight. On the other end, fans are able to give feedback and experience these artists on a whole new plane.

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