Here We Go Again

Internet Killed the Video Star

In the late-1990s and early-2000s, there were dire predictions about the future of music video production, and the music industry generally. A decade prior, during music video’s “golden years” between about 1985 and 1996, it was a different story. The production costs of a major label music video ballooned from the tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands, and eventually multimillions for a major artist. Music videos became fully integrated into record company structures, central to the activities of marketing and publicity departments. Around the world, music television outfits multiplied and existing networks expanded their reach. Since the late-1990s though, the music industry has suffered massive slumps in profits and sales figures, which are blamed on digital piracy and the effect of peer-to-peer file sharing (Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA] 2011). And a number of the major music television networks have become noticeably less music video-friendly. As early as 1985, MTV had started to find 24/7 music video programming incompatible with the higher ratings required to generate more advertising revenue and it began its gradual move away from music videos to more conventional and scripted programming, recently dropping the words “music television” from its logo altogether (Pareles 1986, 21). Music television still persists, in chart countdown shows on free-to-air and on dedicated cable television channels such as Channel [V], MTV, and MuchMusic, but music videos have mostly been relegated to second-tier spin-off or affiliate channels (such as MTV2 or [V]Hits), where they compete with concert specials, music documentaries, music-oriented game shows, cartoons, and reality TV. During the late-1990s and early-2000s, support and funding for record marketing and promotion was gradually scaled back, and music video productions and budgets were substantially reduced. In the 2000s, a major label might spend US$75,000 for an established act and just US$3,000 to US$5,000 on a clip for a new artist: “Gone are the days of the $600,000 video.” ¹

As music videos were being sidelined by the music and television industries, however, they were rapidly becoming integral to YouTube, MySpace, and other online video aggregates and social media spaces. A brief visit to any of the major online video hubs quickly reveals how popular and prolific music video content is on these sites. There are dozens of ways to slice the viewing statistics of music videos on YouTube or VEVO, each resulting in jaw-dropping figures in the hundreds of millions and frequently billions. On YouTube, for example, music video–related material makes up one of the largest categories of online videos, and they consistently top the site’s charts for “most-viewed,” “most-popular,” and “most-discussed” videos (see Bruno 2009, 7; Burgess and Green 2009, 43–44). Since 1999, the major record labels have struck deals (with varying degrees of success) with an assortment of sites that stream music videos online, including YouTube, MSN, Yahoo!, imeem (now defunct), MySpace, MTV.com, and the syndication hubs Hulu and VEVO. By the end of 2008, the Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music Entertainment channels on YouTube were the first and second most watched channels on the site, with nearly 3 billion and 485 million views, respectively (McDonald 2009, 395). Following VEVO’s launch in 2009, views of online music videos have continued to increase. VEVO claims to deliver some 3.3 billion views monthly (Quinn 2012), and at the end of 2011, the VEVO channel on YouTube was the most watched channel globally, generating a huge 56 billion views (according to YouTube’s “Most Viewed” channels globally as at December 23, 2011). Whichever way you dissect the viewing statistics, it is clear that music video content is being uploaded, watched, and shared by audiences in large volumes—and the major labels are responding accordingly.

Some of the reasons for the rapid success of music videos online have to do with broader developments in digital media. While record companies were cutting music video budgets and industry papers like Billboard were lamenting the end of an era, digital technologies have made it easier for many bands (and their fans) to produce and distribute music videos outside of traditional networks and without financial support from their labels. Digital cameras and postproduction equipment have become cheaper, meaning that while music video budgets may have fallen, so have production costs. Hence, OK Go boasted that the cost of their first “viral” video was just US$5, “the cost of the videotape” (Dakss 2006). The short, snappy, and self-contained structure of music videos was well suited to the download speeds and streaming limitations of early broadband Internet. A three-minute music video is a relatively small piece of digital media, which could be compressed, downloaded, and streamed successfully and with acceptable resolution several years before the same could be said for complete long-form television shows or films on-demand. Sites like LAUNCH.com (now incorporated into Yahoo!) screened full-length music videos on its website in 1999, whereas Internet television players such as BBC iPlayer, Hulu, or ABC iView were not launched until 2007 and 2008.

Music videos were also an excellent form of content for online platforms at a time when content was in great demand. According to one industry observer in the early years of online video, “New media efforts need content, and music videos are killer content” (Atwood 1997, 89). Back in the late-1970s and early-1980s, the rapid proliferation of new satellite and cable stations resulted in many hours of empty schedules to fill. For these new stations, music videos, home shopping, infomercials, and other forms of promotional “advertainment” provided program options that were cheap or even free. In a similar vein, the massive back catalogs of music videos produced since the late-1970s gave online video sharing sites an abundant source of much-needed, preexisting, suitably brief content, which is typically classified for a general audience. The difference, of course, is that this time around record companies have been much more vocal about the need to be reimbursed for the use of their content.

“A Revenue Stream, Not Just a Promotional Vehicle”

The traditional rationale for music videos was simple. In exchange for the cost of a video, record companies could receive exposure for a single and hopefully more revenue from an increase in sales of records, other rights fees, and merchandise sales. That is to say, until recently the value of a music video for a record label was almost entirely promotional. Following the success of YouTube era music videos like “Here It Goes Again” (and the popularity of music videos online more generally), the music industry has started to reimagine what the music video is and what purpose it serves. Once thought of primarily as a marketing tool, music videos are now recognized by the industry as “a revenue stream, not just a promotional vehicle” (Bruno 2007, 33). There are a range of new methods for generating income from both new release and existing music videos, and as a result music videos have begun to serve different (or additional) economic and industry functions.

Music videos might be successful as promotional tools but they have not traditionally been money spinners themselves, despite the recording industry’s best efforts. Initially, MTV received clips for free (from the catalog owned by its parent company Warner, and eventually the other major labels). When MTV did begin to pay for rights, the fees covered the video production costs of the record companies but did not necessarily generate any profits (Banks 1996, 65). In the late-1980s, record companies began to release more and more music videos for sale on VHS, but—with the exception of artists with massive fan bases like Madonna or New Kids on the Block—music videos were not a retail success (Verna et al. 1992, 10). But now, in keeping with broader music industry activities that have attempted to diversify revenue streams in the face of poor album and single sales, music videos are finally being monetized in a variety of ways. Online video platforms pay a share of their revenue to record companies in exchange for the use of the clips and music. Revenue is generated from paid downloads via third-party online stores like iTunes, which are often advertised alongside the music videos. And also via online rentals through companies like Netflix; through sponsorship, cross-promotions, product placements, and other synergistic partnerships; through the generation of valuable data about audience and more generally through the cultivation of emotional loyalty. ² The combination of multiple revenue streams and reduced production costs means that music videos online are potentially giving record companies a much better return on their investments than they ever did on television. This was acknowledged in a June 2012 press statement jointly issued by UMG and the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) in which the two groups announced they had negotiated a licensing deal that, for the first time, granted songwriters and music publishers a share of the income increasingly being generated from music videos (NMPA and UMG 2012). Record companies have been trying to sell music videos to consumers in some form or another since Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1983), but what is different in the broadband era is the diversity of methods the industry now uses as part of their effort to corral the digital dollar, and the relative success they have had in capitalizing on these new revenue options.

“More Money Is Generatedand We Take a Larger Percentage of It”

In the late-1970s, music videos began to be financed and produced by record companies and then distributed to different promotional sites. They were submitted to bars and nightclubs that were newly installing elaborate audiovisual units (Duran Duran’s raunchy “Girls on Film” [1981] was specifically made for this adults-only club audience), to television music and variety shows on which a band was unable to make a live appearance, and eventually—and overwhelmingly—to dedicated music video programs. For music television providers, music videos offered cheap programming that the channels and networks then tried to generate income from in the form of advertising, sponsorships, pay-per-views, and subscriptions. In other words, record companies distributed music videos to exhibitors and it was exhibitors who attempted to capitalize on them in whatever way they could. Now, however, as music videos have been reimagined as valuable content rather than just promotional aides, the major music groups have repositioned themselves as video exhibition platforms. Record companies have teamed up and partnered with other media companies to develop integrated syndication hubs, which directly challenge the traditional role of music television networks and their established relationships with record companies.

The largest of these syndication hubs is VEVO, launched in 2009 as a joint venture between UMG, Sony Music Entertainment, Abu Dhabi Media Company, and in partnership with Google/YouTube. In December 2009, VEVO also negotiated a licensing deal with EMI, whereas Warner Music signed a deal with Hulu, another joint-venture syndication hub incorporating NBC, Fox, and Disney/ABC. VEVO provides music video content managed by the major music groups on its website and it is also the exclusive distributor of that content, syndicating music videos to AOL, YouTube, Yahoo!, and MTV.com (as well as other media platforms—VEVO is now an app available on smart phones, tablets, and the Xbox 360 gaming console). Syndication hubs like VEVO address the two major problems facing the industry when it comes to music videos online: how to recover licensing payments from sites like YouTube, and how to cash-in on the popularity of music videos online without alienating audiences. VEVO provides viewers with free online music videos just like MTV.com or YouTube do, but it gives record companies much greater control over their content and the possible income generated from it. As Billboard reports, “Rather than simply license videos to aggregators like YouTube and AOL and let them pitch to advertisers, the labels are embracing a syndication strategy under which they supply the videos and sell advertising around that content” (Bruno 2009, 7). The same Billboard article goes on to quote Warner executive Michael Nash who says, “This model flips the economics so we take a bigger share of the total revenue generated . . . It’s win-win for us. More money is generated and we take a larger percentage of it” (quoted in Bruno 2009, 7). The emergence of syndication hubs does not appear to have changed the established licensing relationships between the major record companies and music television broadcasters, but it does affect the online activities of those broadcasters. In mid-2010, for example, UMG withdrew its massive catalog of music videos from MTV.com when MTV Networks were unable to negotiate a satisfactory syndication deal with VEVO and UMG (Morris 2010, 6).

Syndication hubs like VEVO are not the only change to traditional music video distribution models. Footage of OK Go rehearsing stage choreography for their song “A Million Ways” became immensely popular on iFilm and other online video sites before the band had thought to use the footage specifically as a “music video” and before they had sought approval for the clip from their label. Brian Garrity (2006) describes the strategy and timeline behind the release of their next video—“Here It Goes Again”—and its various shortcomings and successes. According to the band and their manager, there was “a growing frustration that all the enthusiasm for the video [‘A Million Ways’] has not resulted in meaningful sales for either the album or the single” (Garrity 2006, 23). So when it came to promoting “Here It Goes Again,” the band tried to generate increased sales by incorporating “viral” video distribution alongside traditional music television. Using the online success of “A Million Ways” as leverage, the band’s manager secured top rotations on the MTV spin-off cable channel VH1 (specifically a commitment to play the video more than fifty times per week in the first month of the video’s release). The video was submitted to VH1, YouTube, and other video sites on the same day. Helped along by other publicity activities and a high-profile retail positioning ready to capitalize on the video’s promotion, the overall result was a four- to fivefold jump in single and album sales (Garrity 2006, 23). On the one hand, OK Go’s approach demonstrates a bottom-up model of distribution that bypasses label executives and traditional music television in favor of Internet notoriety and grassroots fan-based distribution. On the other hand, the band also relied on high rotation on mainstream cable music television. In recent years, there has been an increase in video distribution managed by the major music groups via affiliated syndication hubs, as well as an increase in fan and artist-released videos that largely bypass label intervention and traditional music television programming. Both would suggest that the relevance of traditional third-party distribution platforms like VH1, MTV, and chart countdowns is waning. However, as the OK Go example demonstrates, successful high-profile distribution via mainstream music television is still necessary for translating “viral” video success into sales.

I Want My . . . Music Videos On-Demand

One of the most important changes to contemporary music video culture has been the transition from a mainly televisual model of exhibition to one based on the searchable, on-demand nature of Internet browsing. Traditional music television programming worked much like a radio broadcast model. Music video playlists were typically programmed according to popularity and sales figures, most obviously in the case of chart-based countdown shows like Countdown (1974–87, ABC) and Video Hits (1987–2011, Channel 10) in Australia, or Top of the Pops (1964–2006, BBC) in the United Kingdom. Music television was also programmed according to the appeal of certain artists or music styles to demographics attractive to advertisers, as well as other playlist requirements negotiated as part of licensing deals between record companies and music television broadcasters. This meant a huge proportion of popular music videos that did not meet those demands were largely unavailable on mainstream music television. And even clips that did satisfy those requirements were, for the most part, still unavailable for audiences to access in their own time. There are some important exceptions to this rule, such as video jukebox machines and pay-per-view television stations, VHS collections like Madonna’s The Immaculate Collection (1990), or, later, CD-ROM and DVD value-adds to music CDs. By and large, however, a massive amount of material from the late-1970s onward was simply inaccessible to audiences to view on-demand (or at all). Audiences were prevented from enjoying music videos in the same repetitive, on-demand way they enjoyed other popular music recordings.

As music videos have moved to online video aggregates, audiences are now able to search, watch, rewatch, skip, and develop personal playlists from a huge collection of music videos (and their associated remixes, remakes, and parodies), largely at their leisure. At the same time, online retailers like the iTunes store let audiences buy digital downloads of a far greater range of individual video clips. Digital cable channels have also moved to provide on-demand music videos through web-enabled television and game consoles (see, for example, Music Choice’s SWRV network, launched in February 2010, or VEVO’s plans to move into television). When MTV Networks launched their online video-on-demand site in 2005, following the success of music video content on sites like AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!, Network President Van Toffler said the reason for the expansion was because MTV viewers “want to absorb our content in non-linear ways . . . They want a more immersive experience that allows them to opt in when and where they want” (quoted in Morrissey 2005, 14). His observations demonstrate a fundamental shift from a televisual to an Internet model of exhibition.

For many early critics, music television was television at its most televisual. “MTV’s programming strategies embody the extremes of what is inherent in the televisual apparatus” said E Ann Kaplan (1987, 4) of the small, two- or three-minute segments of entertainment that made up the station’s daily broadcast. Self-consciously referencing the media theory of the day, MTV’s Inaugural Director Bob Pittman also described MTV and music videos as being more “about flow” (quoted in Shore 1984, 184). By comparison, Toffler’s comments demonstrate the extent to which MTV has moved away from traditional concepts of televisual flow and associated viewing patterns toward a nonlinear exhibition that prioritizes audience choice and interaction. The availability of music videos on-demand greatly alters audience viewing experiences from a largely one-way broadcast model organized according to a strictly linear and unalterable radio-televisual broadcast flow, to an interactive, browsing model that is informed not only by the characteristics of broadband Internet but also by the highly repetitive, on-demand nature of popular music listening. For both commercial cable and Internet music video providers, meanwhile, video-on-demand is used to encourage audiences to defy the short-form nature of music video and to stay engaged for longer, which can hopefully justify greater advertising dollars.

What Is a Music Video?

One outcome of this “on-demand” quality has been an amplification of the qualities of variety and heterogeneity that already characterized the visual content of music videos and music television. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, music videos and music television were repeatedly described by academics as “fragmented,” in a large part because of the volume and diversity of their visual content, and the “illogical” and often rapid cutting between that content. For these reasons, writers like John Fiske (1986) argued that music videos were polysemic; instead of a dominant or singular meaning, they were characterized by textual openness and ambiguity. On music television programming, which might have contained several hours or even 24/7 music videos, the overall result was visual (though not necessarily musical) variety.

On video sharing sites like YouTube, the principle of variety is even more pronounced (Vernallis 2010, 234). A search conducted in April 2010 for OK Go’s “Here It Goes Again” produced a huge range of official, commercial, user- and fan-made versions, remixes, parodies, and so on. The clips that turned up were varied not only in terms of their content and creator but also in terms of relevance and quality. This increased sense of variety—and much broader definition of what might constitute a “music video”—is amplified again by a range of other trends. Music video–style content is common on television shows like Saturday Night Live (1975–, NBC) or Glee (2009–, Fox). Music videos are recycled across different media sites, such as the adaptation of the “Here It Goes Again” treadmill routine for a November 2007 episode of The Simpsons (Fox), and computer games like Michael Jackson: The Experience (2010, Ubisoft), which lets players recreate the dance moves from Jackson’s music videos. Moreover, there are a growing number of experimental, interactive “music videos”—like The Wilderness Downtown (2010)—which are built in HTML5 for web-only viewing. All these forms of music video remixing, repurposing, and reimagining contribute to a much more expansive textuality. The term music video now refers to a very wide range of music video–style content, which can be encountered across a variety of media sites.

Music videos are now characterized by the searchable and on-demand nature of online exhibition, an amplified variety and a greatly expanded definition of what might be considered a music video. That said, their presentation on sites like Yahoo! Music, YouTube, and VEVO is far from chaotic or totally unpredictable. Music videos are now viewed online and on-demand, but this interactivity functions alongside a number of other developments that attempt to control and capitalize on that “on-demand” quality and seek to minimize the negative impact of the “noise” created by this increased choice and expanded textuality. When I was first researching this article back in early-2010, my initial searches for the “Here It Goes Again” video turned up all manner of amateur, user-made, and treadmill-themed videos. But following the recent introduction of official, VEVO-branded artist channels on YouTube, a similar search conducted in 2012 produced a much more commercially controlled “variety,” consisting of OK Go’s other music videos, their live performances, and a range of other videos being promoted by VEVO—all of which feature both pre-video advertisements and links to the songs’ pages on the iTunes store. Many on-demand music video sites or apps—such as VEVO and MTV.com—let audiences search for videos on-demand and create their own playlists. They also suggest playlists based on the audience’s search terms, existing social networking profiles and media libraries, thereby directly targeting a user’s preferred tastes and interests. These playlists work to produce a more personalized flow that tries to keep audiences watching for longer, completing more views and participating in additional valuable interactions.

Liking, Sharing, Making, and Remaking

Although audience interactions with music videos are being commercialized in a variety of ways, audiences are also reappropriating music video content to satisfy their own (highly idiosyncratic) media interests. Until the arrival of broadband Internet and video sharing sites, opportunities for interactivity and direct participation with music videos were limited. There have been notable exceptions to this rule, such as MTV and Madonna’s “Make My Video” competition for her 1986 single “True Blue” (discussed in Fiske [1989] 2011, 81–82). For the most part though, audience participation was limited to requesting or voting for favorite clips. Of all the changes to music video culture that have occurred in the YouTube era, changes to cultures of reception are the most familiar. They are largely in keeping with other well-documented digital media trends, namely, increased opportunities for participation and user-created content. As on-demand viewing and large searchable databases offer viewers a far greater choice of what and how they watch clips, audiences have been positioned as programmers as much as spectators. The presentation of music videos online has also facilitated much more audience interaction in the form of user-made music videos, and practices of tagging, sharing, “liking,” and using music videos as part of broader social media activities. The well-known treadmill choreography from “Here It Goes Again,” for example, has been the source of inspiration for a huge range of audience-made clips, as diverse as a recording of high school students performing the “Here It Goes Again” choreography for a talent contest ³ to a stop-motion animation of the treadmill routine done in Lego. ⁴

The online, on-demand availability of music videos has made it much easier for audiences to study and replicate key details of the original performance or video (such as choreography, performance styles, editing, cinematography, and costumes). The jumbled mix of user-generated and commercial content found on sites like YouTube also makes it easy for audiences to move between the original music video and their myriad remixed versions, and between amateur and professional productions. So while there have been fan-made music videos almost as long as there have been music videos—as evidenced by the Madonna/MTV competition from 1986—in a YouTube era, the ease, volume, and importance of audience participation and interactivity are greatly increased. Music videos have become a dialogic, conversational hub around which a wide variety of mash-ups and remakes take place, which address a growing audience extremely literate not only in music video aesthetics but also in the rhetoric of parody, remixes, and fan cultural productions.

“Viral” Videos and Music Videos

Following its release, the original video by OK Go quickly became the center of a hub of commercial and audience activities. Like many other videos—such as “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” (2007), “Single Ladies” (2008), or “Telephone” (2010)—“Here It Goes Again” is a “viral video” as much as it is a “music video.” The trend toward “viral” music videos was recently acknowledged by MTV with the introduction of a new category in the 2012 Video Music Awards for the “Most Share-Worthy Video.” In becoming a “viral music video” rather than just a plain old “music video,” clips like “Here It Goes Again” seem to demonstrate some important shifts in music video aesthetics. According to many academics writing in the 1980s and 1990s, music videos and music television were quintessentially postmodern media—products of the referential, fractured, superficial, hedonistic cultural contexts in which they first emerged. ⁵ As many theorists saw it, music television was a superficial jumble of nonsense and spectacle—nonlinear, nonnarrative, incoherent, and illogical (see, in particular, Fiske 1986; Kaplan 1987).

By comparison, the “Here It Goes Again” video is radically different from this postmodern definition of music video aesthetics. The video is coherent, focused, linear, and intact. It is cheaply made and it is not fixated with glossy, tactile surfaces or art direction in the style of an expensive fashion shoot (although “Single Ladies” and “Telephone” very definitely are). It is not fragmented and it does not feature rapid editing, in fact it is almost the total opposite—a single video take from the one static camera (a strategy that translates well on the small screens and low resolution of online video—see Vernallis 2010). The premise for the video is exceedingly simple, albeit silly. Like an acrobatic stunt or other feat of physical endurance, “Here It Goes Again” is structured as a neat, funny trick that becomes progressively more amusing and impressive the longer the band is able to sustain their performance. In many ways, the “Here It Goes Again” video is so unlike the typical postmodern music video that it seems positively old fashioned. This is a point that Henry Jenkins (2006) has already observed, describing the OK Go video (and YouTube culture more generally) as vaudevillian, and it is an idea that I have elaborated on elsewhere (Edmond 2010).

At the same time, the video is entirely contemporary and fits exceptionally well into both industry and academic definitions of “spreadable media” and “viral” video content. For writers like Jean Burgess (2008; Burgess and Green 2009) and Henry Jenkins (2009), what defines the success of a “viral” video or Internet “meme” is the “spreadability” of the content. That is, “the extent that it acts as a hub for further creative activity by a wide range of participants in this social network” (Burgess 2008, 102). For Burgess (2008, 105), successful spreadable media prioritize remix ability through “textual hooks or key signifiers”; however, when it comes to user-generated videos she acknowledges that these “hooks” are sometimes hard to predict. Along similar lines, Jenkins (2009) argues that “spreadable” texts are defined by “good, compelling content” and a textual openness that encourages remixing. These observations are largely in keeping with the media industry’s own rulebooks for successful “viral” video marketing, which emphasize short, “bite-sized” clips with simple and remixable designs (Greenberg 2007). Meanwhile for YouTube’s founders, the defining characteristic of “clip culture” is its “lean-forward” experience, as opposed—I imagine—to the “lean-back” experience of conventional television (Chad Hurley quoted in “Clip Culture” 2006).

Based on these definitions, the video for “Here It Goes Again” is a perfect example of a “viral” video, “spreadable” media, and “clip culture” more generally. Not only has “Here It Goes Again” been widely appropriated as material for “spreading” (by way of sharing, remixing, parodying, remaking, etc.) but it also had a comparatively long shelf live, with new versions still being made a number of years after the song’s original release. However, I am skeptical of seeing this as evidence of a radical transformation in music video aesthetics, or the “rules of thumb” according to which music videos are made and understood. Certainly, to compare “Here It Goes Again” with the picture of the typical postmodern music video painted by 1980’s media academics (fragmented, schizophrenic, incoherent, excessive) suggests some profound differences. However, if we hold “Here It Goes Again” up against well-known clips from a pre-YouTube era—such as Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film” (1981), Godley & Creme’s “Cry” (1985), Madonna’s “Material Girl” (1985), Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” (1986), Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible” (1988), Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” (1990), R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” (1992), 2Pac’s “California Love” (1996), or most obviously Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” (1999)—we can identify much the same “viral” potential. Like “Here It Goes Again,” they are all characterized by novel, succinct, catchy, memorable concepts and visual hooks—from the identical beauties of “Simply Irresistible” to the super low-budget, dorky dance performance in “Praise You.” Music video aesthetics only appear to have altered dramatically if we take it at face value that the early postmodern academics writing about music videos got it right, which they did not.

It is no coincidence that music videos have become some of the most “viral” of all online video content, because they have long been predetermined to be successful in these ways. Novel concepts and memorable visual hooks have always been integral to music video production practices. This is evident in the music video industry’s own emphasis on the commercial value of a good concept (Atwood 1997, 6) and also in educational material about music video production that stresses the importance of developing strong “pitches” to win directing jobs (Schwartz 2007, 74). In a chapter dedicated to the dos and don’ts of pitching a music video concept, Lara Schwartz and the industry professionals she interviews repeatedly emphasize the importance of coming up with visual hooks and concepts that are memorable, succinct, novel, and direct (Schwartz 2007, Chapter 4). All of which bears immediate similarities with the academic and industry definitions of “spreadable” and “viral” media content. So even before bands like OK Go had specifically sought to produce “viral” videos like “Here It Goes Again,” music videos were already exceptionally well suited to the culture of online video sharing and spreading.

Conclusion

The recent trends I have just described suggest some fundamental changes to music video culture, economics, and industry practices, but most have clear historical precedents that are important to keep in mind. The establishment of closely integrated music video distribution and exhibition via music group ventures such as VEVO harks back to Warner Bros.’ earlier ownership of the MTV Networks, or, later, Viacom’s ownership of both MTV Networks and Blockbuster Video. It is also reminiscent of the synergistic logic of media conglomeration and affiliation in the 1970s and 1980s more generally. However, falling music industry profits have meant that in the 2000s these media affiliations and partnerships need to be directly profitable rather than just promotional or cross-promotional opportunities. The recent activities of the major music groups demonstrate a much greater emphasis on generating revenue from music videos and on using them as the basis for developing new income streams. This system is markedly different from more traditional music video distribution systems that were typically characterized as a synergistic “exchange of gifts” between broadcasters and record labels (Wallis and Malm 1988). Likewise, the supply of music videos on-demand, and the ability for audiences to participate by sharing, making, and remaking music videos is not without precedent, but these qualities are greatly amplified in the first decade of the twenty-first century. There have long been forms of audience interactivity and fan-made music videos (not to mention closely related fan practices like “vidding”), but new digital media trends help to make these participatory activities much more accessible and commonplace. Music videos have become some of the most watched and most “spread” of all online video content, but not by accident. OK Go specifically sought to reproduce the “viral” success of their first online video, using the same techniques (single take, cheap production, dorky choreography, novelty comedy) but upping the ante (treadmills!). The short, catchy, clever videos that OK Go make entirely fit the aesthetic demands of online video clip culture as defined by the industry and media academics. However, it is worth remembering what a common strategy this has been across the music video genre, for both pre- and post-YouTube videos. Music videos, not to mention many other kinds of popular entertainment, have long emphasized the importance of memorable concepts and clever visual hooks that can be used as the basis for grabby industry pitches, marketing taglines, promotional images, and—in the era of online video—remixing and spreading. Even the most experimental of the new web-based music videos are still rooted in this logic: novel, clever, catchy, virtuosic. The “$600,000 video” may no longer be the norm, but if the high production values of videos like M.I.A’s stunt laden “Bad Girls” (2012) or Kanye West’s epic “Runaway” (2010) are anything to go by, they have not disappeared entirely. As music videos again come to be seen as important and lucrative assets for record companies, it is entirely possible that video production costs—at least for major artists—will start to climb back to the impressive heights they reached in the early-1990s.

In describing the impact that media convergence has had on music videos, I have tried to update some of the ways we think about music videos, their aesthetics, their systems of exhibition and distribution, their industry functions, and the cultures of reception associated with them. It is an important task simply because mainstream music videos released by the major labels, and their associated remixes and remakes, are absolutely fundamental to online video culture but have received too little attention from scholars writing about contemporary and social media practices. But as I have demonstrated, it is also important because understanding what music videos have changed from reminds us of the ongoing role that older industry and aesthetic paradigms will play in the future of online video.