Research - What is the function of a music video?

Music videos help the artists to gain a various amount of viewers in order to reach a bigger audience, therefore making a wider range of sales. Music videos can help to portray the artists' personal style and show their visual representation. Music videos allow promotion of the artists as they are shared through large amounts of other sources of media such as Twitter and Facebook.
Entertainment plays a large part in this as it shows the artists perspective of the whole idea on the song as it usually follows a story.

Music videos contain different themes which vary through the different genres which usually have different contents. For example, in the Pop music videos usually appear to focus on the star of the video - Artists like Lady Gaga, Beyonce and Katy Perry, will usually have extremely flashy costumes which bring attention to the actual artists' representation and express their sexuality. Here are a few examples:

Lady Gaga ft. Beyonce - Telephone

Katy Perry ft. Snoop Dogg - California girls

Other genres such as alternative and indie follow a very similar video appearance in terms of bands who in the music videos are playing an instrument. Mumford and Sons for example, will create a simple music video in order for cause the audience to focus on the music than the video. This contrasts with the whole idea of the pop music video portrayals.

Music videos commonly feature certain company brands in their videos which involve the company paying the artist to feature their product or brand in their vide. Brands such as Dr. Dre's beats headphones and Coca Cola and  feature in many mainstream videos. Here are a few examples of artists who feature this:

Will.i.am, Eminem & Robin Thicke

Entertainment purposes also come into discussion as the music can then be promoted through music channels such as MTV. On the other hand, some music videos tend to follow a story in order to evoke the emotions of the audience. These have the ability to convince, or to get a point or message across. Here are some examples:

Ludacris ft. Mary J. Blige - Runaway Love

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Same Love

Bruno Mars - Grenade