https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2017/08/169943/music-videos-history-popular-2017
This article asks the question ‘do teens still watch music videos?’ Since older teenagers are a part of my target demographic, I thought it would be interesting to see if they still take an interest in music videos. When teenagers were asked if they still watch music videos, one person answered that she might, ‘if I like both the artist and song’ (this is similar to some answers I received when asking my focus group questions). Another teenager mentioned that ‘sometimes a friend will be like 'watch this' if it's an artist they're super into, but they probably wouldn't post about it on social media.’ The article also states opposing stats from Vevo – ‘61% of teens say that they are watching more online video than they were last year (2017), and 73% say music videos are the best type of content for showing an artist's creative vision’ – suggesting that more teenagers take an interest in music videos than it may seem. The article suggests that ‘teens are engaging with music videos all the time — they just don't realize it.’ This is due to engagement – ‘watching a music video’ doesn’t mean what it did in the past. ‘There’s a next level engagement, what people are sharing, or commenting on, or talking about,’ Patel explains. ‘And then you have an even deeper level of engagement which is, people are...creating things out of that video, for example, memes.’ This article reflects on the idea that interaction with music videos has changed over time, and the idea that interacting with a video is often more than just watching it – and could instead be commenting, sending the video to friends, visiting an artists social media/website, buying merchandise, and other things along those lines.
https://nerdsmagazine.com/watch-music-videos/
This article shows the different websites that audiences can use to watch music videos. Although this article is quite old, it lists YouTube as one the most popular sites for watching music videos, which is still relevant today, as YouTube still seems to be the most popular platform that people in my target demographic tend to use when watching music videos. The article also lists Vevo and Vimeo as platforms that can be used to watch music videos, but after looking at the Vevo website, I noticed that the links to Vevo videos on the website take you to YouTube. Music videos on YouTube also get a lot more views than music videos on Vimeo, and my target audience is a lot more likely to interact with a YouTube video (as shown by the answers to my focus group questions).
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/online-music-listening-preferences
This article looks at the different ways that people consume music nowadays in the streaming era. The article shows the results of a survey that looked at the ways that 2,500 different people listen to music online, and shows that a small percentage (9% of those surveyed) chose ‘I primarily watch music videos online through something like YouTube’ when asked what is the primary way that they consume music. This shows that for some people, watching a music video will sometimes be the first time they hear a song, meaning a music video has to be a good visual representation of the song and its lyrics, as it will sometimes be the first impression that a person gets of an artist. The article also shows that over 50% of people use a music streaming service like Spotify. This article is a few years old, so this number is even higher now (Spotify currently has around 285 million monthly active users), and Spotify is very popular with my target demographic (as shown by the answers to my focus group questions). This suggests that when designing my website for my music video, it would be a good idea to have a link to the song on Spotify so that my target audience can stream the song.
