after vince dropped his recent video it made me think about how there aren't as many big "statement" videos like that anymore from major artists

back in the 2010s cole was using the music video as an opportunity to tell stories of police brutality (crooked smile) and play a house slave in a rebellion (gomd), even when the songs weren't necessarily about those topics

of course there was "this is america" too

I thought about why its less common today and it comes down to a few reasons:

1. people don't watch music videos anymore, if anything they'll watch clips, and it's harder to retain the context of a narrative music video through those, so why spend all those resources when people aren't gonna watch from start to finish?

2. artists are jaded from the fact that doing these videos clearly did not lead to much social change if any and probably feel like the average person is worse off now than they were in the 2010s

3. a lot of artists just don't have a political message to share, and when you try to force one into something, it comes off heavy-handed and lame, especially post-covid when there has been a lot of pushback from people about hollywood trying to be "woke" or whatever

4. when artists make a REAL political statement they could lose a lot of money (see: Kehlani)

what do yall think? would you even want to see more videos like this in the first place? it feels like a relic of a different time lowkey

Production is expensive and the roi on a video isn’t what it used to be.

Labels can pay a fraction of what they’d spend on music videos to influencers to post the song on tiktok and get way more reach and traction.

I think TikTok killed the music video. People are used to shortform, vertical content now, and that's almost the exact opposite of the format of music videos

money

S***s sad

I'll never give up on a good music video

Younger crowd could not care less about music videos. They are for phones now instead of TV

Waste of resources.

Streaming

I would argue music videos were for phones in the 2010s too. The big shift is from horizontal to vertical content and how it changes clippability and sharing of video

no budget bring back 90s movies that felt like films

It’s gotta be just a hip hop thing lol because the Latino artists still doing Music videos like it never left if the song doesn’t have a video it won’t reach the audience like if it did

Funny enough the last 2 big music video were from Drake and Kendrick

It’s interesting that YouTube is at its most popular while music videos are at their least