The music video.

The music video was technically invented in 1941 with an invention called the "Panoram Soundie" which was a jukebox that played video clips along with a song, this device was forgotten about after World War 2 due to its competition with television, Bohemian Rhapsody was the first music video because unlike the soundie it had the visuals dedicated to the song and created to fit it. 1962 brought shows like "Top of the Pops" and "Ready!Steady!Go!" which have had a heavy impact on both producers and consumers of the music industry. The purpose of this essay is to show how music videos have evolved and adapted through the years and what is the purpose or purposes that they serve.

The main purpose of a music video is to make money,  these music videos will promote the director/artist by making their music both musically and visually pleasing and in most cases the music video adds something to the music itself, whether it makes it memorable because it was funny or strange or maybe it adds a story/insight into the song that was difficult to see before, it also means that because it now has a video to it the song can now be purchased as a DVD, although today it is rare that people purchase a DVD of music videos because there are cheaper and easier ways to access music videos, Music videos have a number of ways of promoting both the artist and the director: while the video will most likely include the artist(s) of the song it may also include the artist or the video producers unique style, the names of the band, band members or throwbacks to past videos or products from the band or artist, the easiest way to promote the director of the video would be to include his/her name at the beginning or the end of the video.

When creating a music video a good producer will do his or her best to make their video stand out, over the years music video producers have created many ways to get their work noticed, obviously a large part of the video will be the music that it goes along with so it is important to get the musician(s) in the video and to make sure that the viewers notice them, a lot of producers do this by emphasizing anything they can about the band like a logo, colour scheme or style, a good example of this is superheroes by the script, although they don't necessarily have a colour scheme you can still spot their style, logo and band members in the video. Mainstream videos are able to spend a huge amount of money on music videos, as the labels can afford it. Although, Independent videos tend to have a much smaller budget for the music video, sometimes the band or artist have to make do with a phone camera and their local are to create a music video, there are a few examples of this on YouTube. A prime example would be YouTube this online video site has seen the rise of many popular artists such as Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen, these famous musicians began posting videos of themselves singing and playing guitars on YouTube which attracted the attention of agents and record labels that made them rich and famous, however today it is much harder to get recognized due to the amount of people and videos on YouTube and because of all the new rules and regulations. 
Purchasing music has become much more complicated than it used to be, artists now get payed through royalties from their record label or manager, Creating a music video means that the artist is able to earn more royalties because there are now more products for them to receive royalties from. Every time a music video is played the artist earns a small percentage from their plays just as they would if their song(s) were played on the radio. Royalties are especially hard to calculate today because of the amount of illegal downloads, these downloads mean that the artist loses out on a lot of money Tracking the royalties for a song is a difficult task performed by royalty managers, here is a link explaining how it is done Music videos have made royalty managers jobs even harder because rather than tracking sales and  radio times, etc. they now have to calculate how many times a video has been viewed, at what times, etc.
Music videos have become much easier to create, publish and view thanks to technology, the internet, etc. The best example of this is YouTube, since 2005 YouTube has allowed many musicians to share their music online through posting a video, professional or amateur musicians can access this site and receive feedback from the rest of the world, There are also sites such as Tubedy, Vimeo, etc. but they are more difficult to use and aren't as popular.
Synergistic marketing is when an artist or band works with a larger company to promote both of their products, for example in the recent DC film "Suicide Squad" Panic at the disco covered Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, this worked wonders for both the band and the film as it became extremely popular, a lot of the time if a band and a film/game have a similar target audience one will offer the other a temporary partnership in order to promote both parties. Synergy can also be products, like beers for example, James Bond films often have Heineken beers in them, as well as the car contracts that James Bond has had with BMW, Aston Martin and Jaguar.
In my opinion Music videos were a brilliant idea, they have grown to be a large source of online entertainment, I believe that their main purpose was/ is to make money for a lot of people, but many people have benefited in many ways because of these music videos both physically and mentally and that they will be around long after this generation is gone.