Deadlines/Brief

Music videos are so 80s/90s, right? They belong with the era when MTV screened wall-to-wall vids instead of 'reality' TV? Try telling that to the millions who bought Gangnam Style; were they really simply loving the music? 1.6bn (and still climbing) have viewed the video on YT, not to mention the many re-makes (school eg, eg2), viral ads + celeb link-ups (even political protest in Seoul) - and it doesn't matter how legit it is, this nightmare for daydream Beliebers is making a lot of money, even from the parodies + dislikes. All this for a simple dance track that wouldn't have sounded out of place in 1990 ... but had a fun vid. This meme itself was soon displaced by the Harlem Shake. Music vids even cause diseases it seems!
This blog explores every aspect of this most postmodern of media formats, including other print-based promo tools used by the industry, its fast-changing nature, + how fans/audiences create/interact. Posts are primarily written with Media students/educators in mind. Please acknowledge the blog author if using any resources from this blog - Mr Dave Burrowes

Wednesday 28 August 2013

Some Useful Sites

RadarMusic: acts/labels actively seek out video-makers
There are many links lists on this blog, so rather than add to these, here's a few useful sites I've noticed recently:
For UK chart archives, The Official Charts Company offers a dropdown list by year, which then displays weekly clickable charts;
Although its for the US Billboard and only the year's top 20, this site is superb, with videos and iTunes links for each beside each single.
Odd URL (songs-old.com), but you get a random vid loaded up if you click on the homepage (likewise the homepage for music-old.com!). If you refresh the page a fresh random selection is made.

Top 40 vids right here;

The MTV Videos page is ... awful!
But it certainly highlights how far they've shifted from the originating vision of 24/7 music vid/TV; when I looked just now it autoplayed some Geordie Shore dreck. The default MTV.com page prompts you to go the .co.uk site, as many vids are blocked for non-US visitors.

Very useful site!
VideoStatic.com shows MTV how they should do it; a well-organised site with side links for featured productions companies, director reps etc, well worth a look for up to date, and not always mainstream, examples. Here's a bit of their blurb:
Videostatic.com has remained largely the same since launching in 2005, bringing attention to the directors, producers and other creatives who make music videos.
Over the years we have built an amazing community of professionals and fans who realized that music videos weren't a thing of past, but actually the future of how music would be experienced. And that future is upon us.
Not as good, but still interesting (and it includes a link to submit your video, as does VideoStatic, so maybe a place to look for feedback?) is PromoNews.

Magazine sites are worth dipping into. NME.com, like many others, will get exclusives for a period on some videos - this is its (rather plain) music video page. If you're more interested in Urban than Indie, there's BET.com (again, fairly bare bones). For extreme metal fans, Terrorizer features not just exclusives but interviews on the making of vids too.

There are plenty of ezines too, LoudWire (focussed on rock/metal) being a great example: lots of exclusives, interviews, lists etc. Here they pick up on Justin Timberlake going metal...
Much more than simply chart news

At the lowbrow, pop end of the market you get the likes of E!Online, an online version of trashy mags like Heat 

Muzu.tv are a fairly major player, and get a lot of exclusives, plus post background material.

There are lots of blogs too; a few examples you could dip into: http://www.gorillavsbear.net/; http://yourstru.ly/; http://wordischeap.wordpress.com/; http://www.sparkups.com/.

Here's one that acts as matchmaker between videomakers and acts/labels needing vids: http://www.radarmusicvideos.com/blog. This allows users to post up proposals for vids and acts/labels to post requests for vids too.

There are lots of webpages with quick and easy graphical lists of recommended music video sites: http://www.ovguide.com/browse_sites?ci=407 and http://music-video.kadaza.co.uk/ being just two examples

Part of the OVGuide.com list
The shorter Kadaza list

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