Designing the Music Business: Design Culture, Music Video and Virtual Reality

Abstract

This chapter concerns contemporary music video production and outlines how musicians over the last decade perceive changes in the ways in which they produce and use music videos. Through reflections on my involvement in the production of Australian musician Emma Louise’s music video for her song ‘Mirrors’ (2013), as well as a digital ethnographic study of 60 music videos that Jefferton James directed between 2012 and 2018, this chapter builds on the work of Caston and Smith (Music, Sound, and the Moving Image 11:1–9, 2017) who argued that music video production has a hybrid production culture that emerged from the coming together of graphic design, specifically album cover and gig poster design, portrait photography, televised live concert performance and fine art.