Is it the end of the music video?

Summary

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Business Daily – “Is it the End of the Music Video?”

Podcast: Business Daily
Host: Daniel Rosny (BBC World Service)
Date: December 2, 2025

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Overview

This episode explores the evolving role of the music video in the modern music industry. Once a central part of artist campaigns and global music culture, music videos now lag behind in the era of social media clips and dwindling budgets—at least in the Western world. Host Daniel Rosny interviews directors, record label executives, economists, and South Korean industry leaders to uncover whether music videos are becoming obsolete or if they’re adapting to new forms and revitalizing in unexpected places, like K-pop.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Shifting Status of Music Videos

• Music videos' former dominance:
  • Once launched global careers, defined cultural moments, and were crucial for sales and streaming platforms. [01:01]
• Current decline in relevance:
  • Closure of TV channels dedicated to music videos (including MTV), superstars like Beyoncé stepping back from production, and artists seeing slower growth in video viewership. [01:38, 02:20]
  • "With artists now asked to churn out content for social media, is the music video still relevant, especially as TV channels dedicated to them have shut down?" — Daniel Rosny [01:38]

2. Social Media’s Disruption

• Short-form content outpaces traditional videos:
  • Viral TikTok clips often garner more attention and engagement than fully produced music videos.
  • “My girlfriend can put up a video of a celebrity walking down the street and it can get 7 million views on TikTok in two days. But a video that someone spent 50 grand on, I’ve been in the edit for two weeks after, is that success now?” — Charlie Sauschild, music video director [03:22]
  • The “gauge of success” has shifted; unless on the scale of 100 million+ views, videos are now often overlooked. [03:22]
• Music video as secondary content:
  • “The music video is almost secondary to what everyone’s consuming on a daily basis.” — Charlie Sauschild [03:22]
  • Artists now split their focus between producing a main video and creating exclusive “highlights reel” content for social media. [03:22]

3. Budget Constraints & Creative Shifts

• Budgets have shrunk dramatically:
  • What was normal for a day’s filming (£100,000/US$130,000) has become rare—now, only “A-list” artists get such investments. [05:24]
  • “To make a music video now is so expensive. Once this whole you’re a signed musician, you need to be a TikToker as well dies down, everyone will realize that music videos are still just as important.” — Charlie Sauschild [05:41]
• Impact on creative choices:
  • Less ambitious videos—often just performance-based—are now more common, as the focus becomes what’s affordable versus what’s artistically ideal. [04:52]

4. Generational and Platform Shifts

• From scheduled TV to algorithm-driven discovery:
  • Amanda Klein (Assoc. Prof. of Film Studies; author, Millennials Killed the Video Star) connects the decline in TV-based viewing to the rise of Millennials and Gen Z audiences accustomed to on-demand and mobile-first media. [06:48, 07:51]
  • "With MTV, it was this captive audience... By the time you hit the early 2000s... Millennials... the first to have been raised with the concept of posting online." — Amanda Klein [07:51]
• Viewing context has changed:
  • “Are you going to sit there for three and a half minutes and watch an artist’s music video? Or maybe you'll go on TikTok and watch, you know, a short clip of it.” — Amanda Klein [07:51]

5. Major Labels’ Perspective

• Visual identity still matters—just differently:
  • Samira Leibmanshteta, VP, Warner Music (Europe/Middle East/Africa), describes a multi-platform approach: music videos now serve as part of a “visual world,” complementing short-form content on TikTok or Instagram. [11:09, 13:25]
  • “It is so important to have this visual world… not just a 15 second TikTok video, but for fans to fully understand the visual world they are trying to create.” — Samira Leibmanshteta [13:25]
• Investment is not gone, but diversified:
  • Instead of focusing solely on blockbuster videos, labels now spread budgets across different types of visual content (e.g., short-form, narrative-driven pieces). [14:08]

6. Economics of Streaming & Video

• Streaming is king, video is a small slice:
  • Will Page, author and former chief economist (Spotify, PRS), reports streaming’s global revenue exceeding US$20 billion—videos accounting for only about $2B, or 6% of label income. [15:04, 15:28]
  • “Video, in terms of its monetary contribution to the business, is relatively small.” — Will Page [15:28]
• The “attention economy”:
  • Metrics like comments-per-view on YouTube may matter more than pure view counts; quality of engagement is key. [15:28]
  • "You work with Artist B. Quality, not Artist A quantity." — Will Page [16:27]

7. Exception: K-Pop’s Music Video Boom

• Music videos are central in K-pop:
  • South Korea bucks the Western trend—here, videos are essential, with increased budgets and narrative focus.
  • “Music videos really are the center of the K-pop industry that brings the fans together and I think that’s what differentiates a music video’s role in the K-pop industry from other countries.” — Yun Hong Kim, CEO of Zany Bros. [17:28]
• Budgets are growing, not shrinking:
  • “Compared to pre-Covid times, I think we’re working on two or three times more of the budget that we used to work with before.” — Yun Hong Kim [18:27]
  • “K-pop has more budget than any other artistic or video industry in Korea.” [18:27]
• Integrated production and agile management:
  • K-pop companies combine management and production, allowing for quick decisions and big investments. [19:07]

8. The Future: Algorithms & Attention

• Social platforms and algorithms dictate what succeeds:
  • In 2025, audience attention—the scarcest commodity—is driving both production and promotional strategies.
  • "The future of music videos may not lie in the traditional blockbuster format, but in how artists, creatives and labels adapt to a world where attention itself has become the most valuable currency." — Daniel Rosny [19:28]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the shifting definition of success:
  “TikTok has skewed the sort of like gauge of what’s successful on YouTube now. So unless you’re on 100 million plus, is that a successful video?”
  — Charlie Sauschild, Director [03:22]

• On artists’ dual roles:
  “Once this whole you’re a signed musician, you need to be a TikToker as well dies down, everyone will realize that music videos are still just as important.”
  — Charlie Sauschild [05:41]

• On shifts in engagement:
  "You work with Artist B. Quality, not Artist A quantity."
  — Will Page [16:27]

• K-pop’s distinctive approach:
  “Music videos really are the center of the K-pop industry... I think that's what differentiates a music video's role in the K-pop industry from other countries.”
  — Yun Hong Kim, Zany Bros. CEO [17:28]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:01 – Introduction: Are music videos still relevant?
• 03:02 – Charlie Sauschild on directing, TikTok's impact, and changing video priorities
• 06:10 – Amanda Klein on generational differences and the MTV era’s end
• 11:09 – Samira Leibmanshteta (Warner Music) on building artists' brands in 2025
• 15:04 – Will Page on streaming economics and video’s place in the industry
• 16:37 – Gangnam Style: First music video to a billion views, K-pop’s rise
• 17:14 – Yun Hong Kim (Zany Bros., South Korea) on K-pop video budgets and strategies
• 19:28 – Closing thoughts: The future of music videos and the attention economy

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Conclusion

The music video’s golden age may be fading in much of the world. While major Western markets scale back, focus shifts to rapid, short-form, and diversified content. In contrast, South Korea’s K-pop machine invests more than ever in music videos as a cornerstone of creativity and global fandom. Ultimately, the greatest value lies where attention goes—whether that’s in a 20-second TikTok or a glossy, narrative-driven blockbuster.

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Transcript

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SAP Concur helps your business move forward faster. Learn [e-mail]. Hello, I'm Daniel Rosny and this is Business Daily from the BBC World Service. When was the last time you watched a music video? They've been central to the recording industry for decades, launching artists worldwide, sparking cultural moments and boosting streaming sales that fuel record label profits.

[E]

This business is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

[D]

It is very much an integrated part in an overall campaign.

[C]

Still, with artists now asked to churn out content for social media, is the music video still relevant, especially as TV channels dedicated to them have shut down across the globe?

[F]

If you're going to watch a music video at this point, you're likely watching.

[C]

It on your phone when some superstars have stepped back from making them. Are music videos in decline or are they more vital than ever to grab our attention and lead to those all important record label profits?

[G]

So compared to pre Covid times, I think we're working on two or three times more of the budget.

[H]

The 20 second clip they see on Instagram could be sometimes better than the actual music video.

[C]

Music videos have been key in how millions discover new artists and songs, but now global names like Beyonce have stopped producing them. She said last year she doesn't want them to become a distraction from the quality of the voice and the music. Other artists are noticing it takes a lot longer to generate high viewing figures for videos as well. I've come to a production Office in the trendy area of East London. Here at Untold studios. On the 14th floor floor of this skyscraper with views that look out across the city, There are dozens of creatives working hard on upcoming secretive projects with some of the world's top musicians.

[H]

My name is Charlie Sauschild. I'm a director of music videos and commercials and I've done it for about eight years.

[C]

Charlie works with household names like Billie, Eilish, Stormzy and Youngblood. And this summer he directed a video for Lewis Capaldi's comeback single, Survive. It has so far been watched around 3 million times on YouTube.

[H]

My girlfriend can put up a video of a celebrity walking down the street and it can get 7 million views on TikTok in two days. But a video that someone spent 50 grand on, I've been in the edit for two weeks after, is that success now? And I think TikTok has skewed the sort of like gauge of what's successful on YouTube now. So unless you're on 100 million plus, is that a successful video? The needs of the music industry has changed a lot over the last five years, let alone the last 20. But I think now with the introduction of social media and the importance of all of that, the music video is almost secondary to what everyone's consuming on a daily basis. What it boils down to, I'd say, is that you need the consumer to watch something that brings them to the music video. And often the 20 second clip they see on Instagram could be sometimes better than the actual music video that they see because you're giving them a highlights reel. The artist and the labels all want as many views as they can get. That means they want stuff that they can continually post for two weeks after the song drops that brings people back to the video. In previous times those clips would just be cut downs of the music video, whereas now it's almost like we need exclusive content that lives or is made for these other platforms. I suppose then affects the main product because you have to split your time on set focused on all of these other aspects of it, but because all.

[C]

Of that is changing, is the concept of a music video changing as well?

[H]

I'd argue it is, yeah. I think now it's not necessarily about making a video that suits the song necessarily. Sometimes it's how can we grab someone's attention? And in reality a music video is a glorified performance. So a lot of videos are centered around an artist standing in a position singing the song and stuff will happen around them and that's like your basic formula to a music video. And that happens more and more now because budgets are less and less. So now it's like, well, this is all we can really afford.

[C]

Charlie says when he first started out in the industry, it was almost unheard of for a day's filming to have a budget of less than £100,000, which is roughly US$130,000. But things have changed.

[H]

So if the budget's over 100 grand, you can probably stretch that out to two days. Whereas now is not rare but budget's over 100 grand. That's kind of where your A list artists exist, right? So whenever someone's like oh well, music videos aren't what they were back in the day and I'm like, well to make a music video now is so expensive. Once this whole you're assigned musician you need to be a tiktoker as well dies down, everyone will realize that music videos are still just as important.

[C]

But how much of this is new? In recent years, TV stations that played music videos exclusively have shut down across Europe and in the US with even mtv, the world's most recognizable music television network, dramatically reducing its output for, well, music. Associate professor of film studies at East Carolina University and the author of the book Millennials Killed the Video star Amanda Klein argues it's been a downward trend for decades, ever since the concept of a music video first began when they were played in record stores across North.

[F]

America and they would have these big video monitors playing music videos. There were a lot of factors that led to the significance of mtv. One of the big ones was you could finally kind of watch your favorite artists perform. Acts that became very popular were very visually dynamic. Big hair, you know, Duran Duran did so well. Kick miss any kind of shtick. The other thing of course is it was just this way to find out what was new in terms of music for today's youth. It's very different because we did not get to choose when things aired. We didn't get to create a playlist. You were really subject to whatever the programmers wanted.

[C]

Budgets used to rival mid tier Hollywood films. Take Madonna, who has released some of the most expensive. Reportedly her videos for the songs Express Yourself, Die Another Day and Bedtime Story all cost more than US$5 million to make.

[F]

The other really big factor is the generational shift. So with mtv, it was this captive audience. You would turn it on and hang out and sometimes you would look and be like, oh, that video, I love this video. And you would stop and you'd pay attention by the time you hit the early 2000s, it's no longer that first generation, that Generation X that MTV was built to cater to. Now we have millennials. And one of the big differences is that the millennial generation is the first to have been raised with the concept of posting online. The idea that your voice is really important, that everybody wants to hear what you have to say. If you're going to watch a music video at this point, you're likely watching it on your phone. And so you have to think, are you going to sit there for three and a half minutes and watch an artist's music video? Or maybe you'll go on TikTok and like watch, you know, a short clip of it. So the context for watching a music video has shift.

[C]

Coming up, we're going to hear about the first music video to hit a billion views online. Any guesses? It was 2012. It's considered to be one of the first global viral hits.

[F]

And.

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That's on Business Daily from the BBC World Service.

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It's a big dog SAP Concur helps your business move forward faster. Learn [e-mail]. I'm Daniel Rosney and we're hearing from industry insiders on how the streaming era has changed how we consume music and shifted the way record labels make money. We'll hear from South Korea shortly where it's said music videos are more important than ever. But in other parts of the world, the medium isn't as much of a priority as it used to be.

[D]

My name is Samira Leibmanshteta.

[C]

Samira is Warner Music's Vice president for its regional marketing team in Europe, the Middle east and Africa.

[D]

And it's very much about running international campaigns, multi market campaigns.

[C]

Warner Music is one of the three biggest labels in the world. Artists on their roster range from Ed Sheeran to Burna Boy to Coldplay and Dua Lipa.

[D]

And we are very much a global company and working a very big diversity.

[C]

Of genres because you have such a broad range of genres and a broad range of artists as well at different points in their career. How do you build a fan base in 2025?

[D]

The big opportunity is that you have multiple platforms that basically give an artist the opportunity to showcase different aspects of their overall artist identity and brand. It is not only the way they look and their music obviously in the center of it, but it's also very much about the story they want to tell. Actually a very good example is Alex Warren.

[H]

This is the UK's official number one.

[C]

Alex Warren, an ordinary making it 12 weeks at number one and also the longest running number one single of the 2000s so far.

[D]

Alex Warren has been massively growing over the past year. Amazing story. He started as a creator on TikTok.

[C]

I've been told not to make a video about this, but you guys deserve answers. Keeps telling me not to talk about it and musicians don't do that.

[D]

And he was telling his story from living in a car, being being homeless, basically having lost his parents in a very young age.

[C]

Alex Warren has nearly 20 million followers and more than a billion likes on TikTok alone.

[D]

And he connected over this very sad stories but in a quite entertaining way with his audience. So there was a lot of people that experienced the same stories and felt very much represented by him, but also by his music. So it's very much about telling the story and connecting it to the music and a big opportunity for artists to then tap into this community. It's not about just like one TikTok hit and then nobody Hears of that artist again, it's about building a long lasting grand.

[C]

Because there's a shift in creating a visual brand on social media platforms. Does the concept of a music video still matter or is it losing its importance?

[D]

It is very much an integrated part in an overall campaign still because it is so important to have this visual world that is not just a 15 second TikTok video, but for fans to fully understand the visual world they are trying to create as part of their music expression as well.

[C]

I know you won't be able to give me any kind of specifics of who gets what, but music video directors say budgets are becoming smaller and within that the they're expected to film more content. So the product of the music video becomes diluted. What's your assessment to the argument that record labels aren't putting as much money in to make music videos as they used to?

[D]

I think that the investment in visuality and content has become even more important. Right. What, and this is very much really different from campaign to campaign might be, you know, a higher cost produced music video because it's just a centerpiece in the overall campaign and fitting in perfectly. But also in some ways it might be like investment in a lot of short form content and shorter pieces that are just building the whole narrative. Like it wouldn't be fair to say that this is just a general thing that is happening. Overall investments are very much focused on content first and a lot of visual creations in general.

[C]

The ifpi, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry worldwide, published a report earlier this year which said the total global streaming revenue had reached more than US$20 billion.

[E]

I am Will Page, the author of the book Pivot and the former chief economist of both Spotify and PRS for Music. The IFPI represents the record labels and their artists, but they do not represent the songwriters and their publishers. Record label revenue, publisher revenue and Collective management organization revenues. That's a long word there. What that means is Performing Rights Society or ASCAP or BMI for your American listeners. And when you put the three together, you find a figure of 45.5 billion. This business is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger because streaming can enter markets that the previous formats couldn't. Video, in terms of its monetary contribution to the business is relatively small. So for 2024, and if I just use round numbers here, if recorded music itself was worth 30 billion, video as a portion of that pie was just 2 billion or 6% of total record label income. With YouTube, we're talking eyeballs as well as ear holes. And it's worth thinking about this in an attention economy. Now there's a very famous booking agent called Marty diamond who represents all the great bands on tour right now. And he said to me the only metric he can trust in the music industry is the comments per views ratio on YouTube. Artist A's got 10 million views on YouTube and maybe 35 comments. Artist B's only got 1 million views on YouTube but 350,000 comments. You work with Artist B Quality, not Artist A quantity.

[C]

Now to that teaser earlier of the first music video to reach a billion views back in 2012. Final guesses, it was Gangnam Style, perhaps the first global introduction to K Pop. The South Korean genre is estimated to be worth more than US$10 billion. The visuals are driving K pop success with strong narratives and storytelling and and while Western markets are scaling back, in South Korea, the business case for music videos has only grown stronger. Zany Bros. Is one of the biggest production companies there.

[G]

We've worked with more than 1500 clients in the K pop industry including BTS, Exo and Girls Generation.

[C]

Yun Hong Kim is the founder and CEO and spoke with me from Seoul through a translator.

[G]

We make more than 100k pop contents every year. So we're almost like a K pop factory at this point. Music videos really are the center of the K pop industry that brings the fans together and I think that's what differentiates a music video's role in the K pop industry from other countries.

[C]

And with the videos that you produce, they more often than not seem to have a plot or a storyline. How does that help keep fans engaged?

[G]

So 20 plus years ago it was a very drama style storyline that were popular in K pop culture called music videos. And then we evolved in a way where they look more like advertisements and focusing on the visual images of the artists. And these days I think they're going back to the narrative form where they like to emphasize the concept, the world view or the storyline of these harkers.

[C]

Elsewhere in the world we're hearing directors are having their budgets cut for the videos. Is that mirrored in South Korea?

[G]

Now music videos are the most important tool in the artist's activity and most of the time the company finances 100% of it and sometimes there are partial investments from brand sponsorships. So there's a lot of over budgeted videos that are happening recently. K pop industry has grown recently, sales numbers have increased accordingly and the budgets for music videos have also increased tremendously as well. So compared to pre Covid times, I think we're working on two or three times more of the budget that we used to work with before. So in a way, compared to any other artistic or video industry in Korea, we have more budget than any of them combined. So another thing that I want to add is that the Korean music industry is very different from any other industries in the world. So these companies that these artists are a part of, they do both management and production. These two usually separate areas are combined. And that's why they're able to make quick decisions and also make big investments like this.

[C]

Historically, music video directors danced to the tune of artists and record labels. But now, in 2025, algorithms and social media platforms are also finding their own rhythm in the mix. The future of music videos may not lie in the traditional blockbuster format, but in how artists, creatives and labels adapt to a world where attention itself has become the most valuable currency. This edition of Business Daily was produced and presented by Daniel Rosny. Thank you for listening.

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