What is your opinion on music videos?

[The Great Superpie]

Do you think they take attention off the music?

I, personally, think that what matters is entertainment and that's what the music is there for, so if the composers can add an entertaining music video along to their song... go for it.

[Bhavraj]

I agree with you. Its all about entertainment. However its no use having great visuals if the song is rubbish. Michael Jackson elevated music videos to a whole new league but he had the music and voice to back it up. Nowadays nobody comes close to him.

[Darth Revan 73]

If the music video is fun and interesting it's a great companion piece to a good song. I would have balked at the idea of a 14-minute video for a 6-minute song, but Michael Jackson pulled that kind of thing off on both "Thriller" and "Bad" because they had interesting premises and fun visuals. Unfortunately, that's set a precedent that plenty of artists try to follow, even if they lack the inspiration to really pull it off. Eventually you reach a point where the video is so long-winded that you stop paying attention, and when the song comes on you're pissed that you wasted so much time beforehand to get to it.

Honestly, I kind of wish we could go back to the day when music videos didn't have to have storylines and were just the band doing random crap. For instance, Pink Floyd made a video for "Corporal Clegg" in 1968 that featured a food fight at a fancy dinner party between the band members.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKN0-BC9PPg

[966]

That was the counter argument to the "MTV age" of the early 1980s when music videos exploded onto the scene. When just about every band/artist was doing them.

Videos would interfere with the memory of the song. Meaning, when you think of your favourite song, you'll think of the video instead of your own thoughts.

There were a few bands that said they were "audio not video" but they would do videos.

New bands of the day had no problem doing the videos & older groups/artists jumped on the bandwagon because it meant more exposure to their new music.

There were videos before MTV (called them promo clips) but there were not any real vehicle to show them often. Only occasionally you would see a pre-MTV video on TV. They were an aftethought.

Videos are just another avenue for promoting new music.

Ironically, MTV doesn't play music videos much anymore & now we have Youtube & other forms of social media to see videos.

In fact, its much easier now to find a new or old video than it was even 15 years ago.