Music Videos for the 'YouTube age'

Music videos were originally shown on platforms like Top Of the Pops which was an early evening, family friendly, live performances of bands. Then they made music videos which were broadcasted on MTV, wheere television shows would show pre recorded music videos which were poplular at the time. Then youtbe came alomg and changed uit all, it allowed anyone to post videos which were unristricted and had no rules about nudity or bad language, unlike how it would of been on MTV and Top Of the Pops  which woukld have restricted certain types of music videos. Youtube also gave everyone the opportunity to watch them anytime, anywhere. It made a massive impact on music videos because they were cheap to create. It no longer became about selling the song and more about using music videos to promote the artists image and target audience.  

YouTube allowed starting artists to cheaply make a music video in order to sell their image to the audience. It gives off their first impression as to what they are trying to promote. For example, this is Nikki Minaj's first music video that she released in 2009.  In this music video, it is clearly low budget, filmed around the city. We can tell from the way she is dressed that her genre of music is rap, this is sold to us as the audience to get an idea of her persona. She is dressed wearing trendy, bright, streetwear clothes with the statement gold jewellery  and very long nails which gives the impression she is an image of hip hop. Her song 'Jumpoff' is most likely aimed at the teenage audience as the locations she is in gives off a cool, teenage vibe.  The label here is presenting her as relatable to the teenage audience in this low budget, fast shot music video. She is presented in front of a graffiti wall, around the city, on a motorbike with her friends and also in a record shop. 'Jumpoff' is Minaj's cover mixtape which was her first music video she had released before signing a recording label with Young Money. 

We can see she is being presented to be a street, hip hop American, female rapper. This 2009 music video gained over 2million views on youtube. From this first video, her latest music video in which she collaborates with Doja Cat called 'Say So' reached 8.1 million views. 
At this point she wasn't a huge star. In this video sells that she is pretty, trendy, young and street style. It doesn't sell the rap song but more promotes Nikki's image of being hip and cool to the teenage audience. Her rap songs have quite a rebellious, female empowering feel to them as she becomes one of the most successful first female rappers in the industry. She is sold in this video to be talented, that she can cover and also rap songs in her own style. She began with these mixtapes before releasing her own songs and music videos.