What makes a good pop promo?

Making a good pop promo all depends on the genre, and what that genre means to its audience. The pop promo is an advert for its artist or for the song so the pop promo has to interest its target audience.

here is some good examples of different styles of music videos.

"Frontier Psychiatrist" by The Avalanches



The Avalanches are an electronic, Alternative Dance, Breakbeat, Plunderphonics music group from Melbourne, Australia, best known for their live DJ sets and debut album Since I Left You. I think that this music video relates to their target audience because The Avalanches music is about mixing other songs together, so the mixing of unrelated visual texts go with the style of the artist meaning it is a great example of a pop promo promoting the artist.

"Everybody" by Rudenko



"Everybody" is a dance/house single by Russian DJ Leonid Rudenko. The song features vocals from Charleene Rená. This is a common dance pop promo feauring slim figured females, wearing little clothing and with the use of choreography. i think that is a good way to promote the artist because it targets a male audience because they will watch it for the females.

pop promo style, forms/conventions and representation
there are many different styles to pop promos depending on the genre of music. each genre has its own style, forms, conventions and represents people and things differently. here are some examples.

Hip-Hop has some of the most obivious uses of representaion. Most of these music videos include woman, normally dressed in clothes leaving little to the imagination. Many music videos show woman to be inferior and are merely used as a sex object or Male gaze. Men are represented as superior to woman by making them the center of attention. They portray themselves as having every thing they want money, cars and women are commonly seen in these types of videos. This gives the impression that if the consumer was to behaviour or aspire to be the artist then the consumer could have whatever they wanted. A hip-hop music video is very distinguishable from other genres as they look stylised and very expensive. Either by shooting in a studio with lots of lighting and props or shooting in new york or V.I.P nightclubs.


Rock/Indie music videos are alot more diverse from one to another although you can place them into 2 main groups. the performance pop promos where the majority of video is band performance that are either very stylised false looking, it is obivous that the performance has been made for the video or a more real look that is more real using less technical shots and aren't so clean cut. Then they also tend to use Narrative stories that has some cuts of the band performance but mainly follows a story. 2 good examples of this type of video is Guns'n'Roses "November rain" and Hoobastank "Reason". The representation of the artists tends to be that they are performing because they love performing not for the lifestyle and publicity that goes along with being in the public eye, although this will always play a big part in it. The artist are represented as anything they want, and seem to look less manufactured by the record labels. This links into the idea behind the genre, of rebeling and being yourself.


Classicial pop promos vary in type this is because the genre has a small target audience that are made of predominantly upper or middle class. this has caused the different styles because they want to broaden there audience, an example of this is Catherine Jenkins. The artists within this genre are represented as well mannered individuals dressed modestly but classy.