Whats a cheap promo video?

At the Great Escape Festival this year Caroline from Radar Music chaired a debate about the future of pop videos, with no less than Kevin Godley acknowledging the changing role of the pop promo in the Youtube age. The average music pitch on radar was for £500 for a new artist, with major artists now aiming to spend £2-5,000.

Listening – most young people prefer Youtube to radio, and will go there first as a discovery place for new music. You must have your single on Youtube, purely as a means of hearing it. Youtube is an essential form of streaming; even if you are not on Spotify, you need to be on Youtube. As I write Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ has just had  100 million streams on Spotify, and an amazing 500,000 plays on Youtube a day – currently at 109,468,339!

Watching – we watch videos embedded in Facebook, on a laptop or computer, or often on a smart phone. Video sizes range from 480 to 720 pixels. Very very occasionally one might hit the full screen icon and watch it in glorious 1280 pixels. Obviously the days of music on TV are over, and are very limited these days, so in the main videos have to work small! And if you are using your mobile bandwidth (3G etc) you want the video to cut to the chase as soon as possible – so brevity is always better.

Blogging – Embedding your video is the new rock’n’roll. People want to talk about your artist or brand, and the easiest way to hear and see them is by embedding your video. As more print press goes online only, the video, rather than the word, becomes ever more powerful.

Sharing – Sharing and recommendation is the easiest way to build a fanbase, and the more you can do that with a good video on social media, the better. But of course one video post may not do the trick, a series of videos (lyric, making of, out take, acoustic, VIP, interview, EPK) may be needed to run a social media campaign, but thats another post!

Here are a few videos we have made for artists to give them a sense of place, to get the song online, and to start the process of building a fanbase:
Sabiyha – Liesel:

Sam Beeton – Storyteller:

Jono Harrison – Josephine Waits:

Freddie – School Night: