Are Music Videos Worth It?

(Another guest post, this time from Kim Lachance of Two Bad Bricks. If you’d like to submit a story for consideration, just reply to this email. Mary x)

Are music videos worth it? After all, they’re generally expensive and are another project to carry out on top of the music I’m creating. So why do them?

I view music videos as a long-term investment. Yes, there are costs upfront if you have absolutely zero filmmaking skills, but the cool thing about video is that almost anyone can get up and running pretty fast these days. If you don’t want to learn filmmaking, a modern phone has the quality to make decent footage. I think that a music video can help people connect further with a song.

My band Two Bad Bricks just released a fully DIY music video for our song 6 Minutes From The Radio. I created this video on my own. I walked around for a month with lemons and my camera and asked friends and family if they’d be down to bite into a lemon wedge while I film them. Since the song is pretty random, I took liberties to be random with this video and not follow a storyline.

This video cost me about $5 or $6 in lemons. That’s it. To add a bit of dimension, I added a wacky colouring to the film to match our album art cover. The cool thing about this video is that it features thirty of my friends and family. That means thirty people actually want to share on their socials because they’re in it! I’ve found the feedback and sharing from friends and friends of friends for this one has been the easiest to date out of all the videos we’ve made.

There are a bunch of indie bands that do cool simple concepts that cost very little to make and that are easily done on your own. For example, Bad Nerves just released a video for their new song where they are simply standing at a tram station while everyone around them catches a tram and walks about. The clip is sped up and they are standing perfectly still for the entire length of the video. It’s cool, simple and cheap to produce.

Creating a video is about going the extra mile. It helps gain attention and just shows that you take your music seriously. So far, I’ve made sure to release a video for each new song we drop and I plan to continue doing this because I truly think they’re worth it. Not to mention, every time I release a video I get some sort of tip from the audience, either YouTube thanks, album purchases on Bandcamp, or a tip on buymeacoffee.com.

I’ve received multiple comments on different social platforms from people who just found us randomly because of a comment I left on someone’s YouTube video and then went down the rabbit hole of watching our music video playlist.

Video is engaging, interesting, bingeable.

Some songs deserve more attention, like for our song Bleeding Red, we created a full scary/creepy music video because the theme was perfect for this and I knew we could capitalize on the Halloween spirit of October. That was our most produced and expensive video yet, it was a blast to make and absolutely worth it.

You can split clips of your music video and have enough content to share on social media for days. Stills, short clips, Spotify canvas, behind the scenes footage… Also, they can help your single’s life cycle last longer since you have more content to push out for this one song. Here‘s what I mean:

1. Song releases with single album art only.

2. Music video releases 3-4 weeks later to create a bigger buzz for the song.

3. Keep pushing the video for 3-4 weeks before the next song release.

4. Option to release a behind-the-scenes video for extra content.

5. Continue this cycle.

I have to credit Jessy Canon on YouTube for this technique. I’ve been following this method since starting to release songs and I’m happy with the momentum we’ve been getting.

To conclude, my point is that having as much content as you can around your songs will help your music create a bigger splash. It’s about going above and beyond and presenting something you are proud of.

Cheers,

Kim

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