The Purpose of a Music Video

I have researched into the purpose of a music video and discovered the idea of a music video is to visually entertain a specific audience. This may be due to the fact that computers now have the ability to create effects that were not used when music videos were first created.

I also discovered that the values of stardom include:

• Youth
• Rebellion
• Sexual magnetism
• Originality
• Creativity
• Conspicuous consumption of sex, drugs and material goods
• A disregard for social values relating to drugs, sex and polite behaviour

Richard Dyer (Born 1945)
Dyer is a theorist that focuses mainly on stardom, and came up with the theory that a star is only an image or text, not neccesarily a person. This is because he believes that they are constructed from 'materials' such as advertisment, television, magazines, radio etc.

• Paradox 1 - A star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer.
• Paradox 2 - A star must be simultaneously present and absent for the consumer.

These paradoxes suggest that this leadds to audience consumption as the artist/band is able to make the consumer feel like they are near them, however they may be on the other side of the world.


Theodor Adorno (1903 - 1969)
Adorno is a maxist who believes in the idea that the pop industry stops us all worrying about 'real' issues. 

Keith Negus  (Born 1957)
Negus had written a book called Producing Pop which is about the pop industry. It identifies two distinct ways of thinking about potential artists from within the music industry.
1. The organic ideology of creativity

• Talent
• Development
• Long Term

2.  The synthetic ideology of creativity

• Short Term
• Manufactured