Advertising in Music Videos

Music videos constantly advertise different things in their content. Most of this being done on the side of the actual video, instead of making the music video an actual advert for the item, they implement it subtly. This applies for almost anything, it depends on the music genre, but in things like hip hop, cars are advertised. This is called product placement.

A particular artist that has a large amount of product placement in their music videos is Britney Spears, specifically the songs Work Bitch and Hold it against me. In Hold it against me, there is an extensive use of Sony products, in almost every shot, also the video has Make up Forever as a product that it is advertising.


As you can see in the images there are several uses of product placement for advertisement to the audience. Britney Spears got a total of roughly £500,000 for implementing these products into her videos. Which is a rather substantial amount for a music video.


Another way of advertising within a music video is called synergy, this is where two areas of media work together. This can relate to a music star releasing a music video which feature scenes from a Hollywood movie. This helps to promote the film but also the artist as their song will feature in the film and probably the trailer which a wider number of people will see. An example of this is from Paramore, and their song 'Decode'. It was the lead track from the Twilight New Moon soundtrack. This synergy enabled Paramore to reach a very wide audience which is made up of teenage girls around the world. It also cements their image as alternative, moody, and visually interesting. The officially video on YouTube gained 77 million views, the most they have received on any of their videos.

A major label strategy is another way in which artists advertise their music. VEVO have a partnership with Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. They host music videos of YouTube and use adverts at the start of each video to produce revenue. This is good for music companies as it allows them to regulate the online distribution of their music videos and make money from it.

Emotional Response of Music Videos

Music videos normally have an underlying messages or meanings behind them. To find these you can look at things like Mise-en-scene, Editing, Camera and Lyrics. All of these effect the meaning behind the video, and give an effect

• Mise-en-scene is a French term, its literal translation is, "Put in the scene." So, everything that has a physical presence in the video is counted as Mise-en-scene. These have minimal effect on the meaning behind the music video, however they are a key part in ensuring the video has some sort of storyline or setting.
• Editing is the various visual and sound effects that can be added to a video for entertainment purposes or to improve the quality of sound and video quality. These can be essential in showing the meaning behind the video. For example, sometimes music videos use visual effects or filters, to show a different time setting.
• Camera all comes down to different techniques to gain different effects, such as the rule of thirds, wide angle or panoramic shots. It depends on what is going on on screen, but generally a panoramic shot is setting the scene, whereas a wide angle would generally have the artist in, and perhaps somebody else who fits in with the theme. For example, in a love song, there would normally be a wide shot of the artist and the lover together alongside a romantic setting.
• The lyrics are one of the most important factors when portraying emotion through music videos, anything the artist wants can be conveyed through the right words, it can make people happy, or make people sad, depending on the genre of music.

Jar of Hearts Christina Perry

The mise-en-scene is used in lots of different ways throughout the music video, the shots used mainly being close ups of her face, conveying the deep emotions the music video is trying to portray. Also when the camera is tracking the subject it generally moves very slowly, again adding to the emotion being conveyed through camerawork. In terms of visuals, there is lots of aggressive dancing, however still begin fluid, this was choreographed like this because it needed to reinforce the theme of heartbreak and loss. There is a constant blue filter over the video, darkening the original clip and making it feel cold, once again adding to the emotion that was being conveyed. The editing of the music video is fairly simple, with the primary transition being a straight cut from shot to shot, however occasionally there is a flash to white and then a fade to the next shot, which suggests that it is a change of theme or a general scene change. There are numerous uses of the same special effect of a dark shadow like image growing through the heart, this shows the emotion of hatred and that the heart, which is symbolic to love,  has been corrupted by it. In terms of camera techniques almost every shot is chosen the way it is because it needs to convey different feelings and emotions, so in this particular music video they use lots of slow pans, zooms and close ups. The close ups focus really on the lead singer and naturally show a huge amount of emotion through facial expression. The slow pan shots are generally following the actions where the male protagonist dances with a female character, this is clearly identifying the fact that they are fighting and is also reinforced by the lyrics. The zooms are use throughout the video and are always very slow, and the speed of them generally means that there is a sad theme to whatever is on camera at the point, which is the case in this video.