Music Promo - What is it?

-       What is a music promo?

A music promo is Promotion of a song and the artist, either for an album or a single soundtrack. It is an advert of the band, including a song accompanied with visual representations. A narrative is presented as the band preform, most likely miming in a made up set.

-       Why do bands/ record companies make them? (Purpose)

A promo is to improve sales and increase publicity. The promo is usually in a video format to bring entertainment and forms a connection between the song and video. Overall it relates to brand identity, informing the audience with such information such as their genre. With the visuals, it increases memorability of the artist. By making the video promo unique, the higher likeliness that wider audiences will remember the artist, persuading them to buy it, therefore increasing sales. For an example Blur's music promo for their song 'Parklife' was very unusual, which in turn made it very popular.

-        Where are they exhibited?

Some music promos are exhibited on music channels, a traditional form of promotion.  A lot of bands, artists were promoted on ‘Top of the Pops’ and in TV channels specialized for music such as MTV. The use of traditional exhibition provides access to large audiences, allowing the increase in appeal.

There are also new media forms of promotion. Where artists directly use forms of social media and the Internet. YouTube and ITunes are an example of new media promotion, where it includes easy access to downloads but also makes it easier for bands/artists to upload content in areas such as Facebook and Twitter, where there is a large audience to attract. Also uploading to YouTube is free, and so highly benefits the artists/bands in profits.