What is the function of a music video?

What is the function of a music video?

A music video is a way to turn a song - something audible but not visible, into something both audible AND visible. Every music video has a song, but not every song has a music video. Most mainstream singles will release a music video, but many individual or underground groups that only sell their music by albums, will not have a music video. 

The main point of a music video, is to promote an artist, whether it be by giving them a lot of "face time" in the video, having their name shown in the video, or the simple fact that the viewer may like the artist more because of the interesting video. Music videos often add interest and intrigue to the song; it may show a new meaning to the words, enhance the words, or simply just entertain. Many people admit that they like a song more once seeing the, or even change their minds about whether or not they like the song.

Rihanna is an artist that uses her music videos to promote herself and her image. She adds sex appeal to herself by featuring seductively in her videos. Her face is shown in all of her videos, and through most of it. This allows Rihanna and her songs to appeal to both male and female artists - she sets an example (though it may not be a good one) for her female fans, and sexually attracts her male fans. While it is debatable whether Rihanna's videos are a good example for the kids or not, they certainly are a good example of a music video: the main function of a music video is to promote the artist, and that's what all of Rihanna's videos do. 

Alternatively, many bands or artists can take a different approach to their music videos. Some people just want to entertain. Many people may talk about a song to other people because they enjoyed the video and the video's meaning so much, which gives the artist/band word-of-mouth promoting, an effective way to give their songs and themselves more attention to a larger scale of people.

Gorillaz is a band that, instead of promoting themselves and their faces, prefer to entertain their audience through their music video. They mix HD animations with real footage to create an appealing and memorable video, that has high attention for a variety of age groups: be it adults that think the deeper meanings to their videos are commendable, teenagers that like the quirkiness of the visuals, or children that like the cartoons, the Gorillaz cover it all. Instead of using the band members' faces, they use specific cartoon characters to represent themselves, which in a way does give the artists some "coverage", but the band have a belief that what they want to promote is music, not physical appearance. The video above is my personal favourite music video, Dirty Harry. I liked the song more after seeing the quirky video.