Music videos aren't what they used to be. Contemporary artists and their collaborating directors are breaking down barriers and reaching fans in exciting and experimental ways. Despite relatively low return on investment, the format continues to be crucial for the development of an artist's identity.

Coachella stands as one of the world's most well known and well-attended music festivals, but headlining does not mean all that it used to. In addition to live performances, artists are putting out prolonged, digitally distributed visual accompaniments to reach their audience beyond the span of two weekends in the Coachella Valley.

Musical artists operate in a paradigm that affords them an audience and platforms, which they can use to influence the tides of social change. Striking the balance between activism and artistry can be a nearly impossible task. When stretched too far, burn-out can cause both to fall by the wayside.

Can we have this dance, virtually? Under restrictions put in place due to the COVID-19 outbreak, dancers have had to find new means and spaces for practising and learning together. In an ad hoc manner, a kitchen is morphed into a (cramped) ballroom.

A response to a pandemic that asks for social isolation, virtual avenues to clubbing attempt to create a safe space for song, dance, and hanging out. But these international, online gatherings are not without their complications. Should these Zoom parties continue to rage past the pandemic, the organisers will need to come to grips with issues of data insecurity and hate speech.

Restricted to their homes, unable to host large on-set production teams, artists are devising new ways of shooting music videos during a pandemic. With a low-budget aesthetic or an increased focus on post-production, pandemic-proof music videos show that artistry does not stop even under the most isolating of circumstances.

MTV made the music video a (brief) fascination of media studies. In the time since the channel's launch, this initial enthusiasm has faded. In Music Video after MTV, Korsgaard brings a scholarly lens to the academically neglected medium. A mountain of untouched history means there is much to be analysed.

The music video is a melange of high and low culture, living before, in, and beyond the contemporary. As a medium, it can be a space for the manifestation of the not-yet or a reaffirmation of the established order. Recognising the complexity of the music video as a mode of cultural expression, this collection takes an appropriately multi-sided approach.

Television has been crucial for the proliferation of the music video. This exhibition at Museo Jumex in Mexico City presented an artistic exploration of the medium.

Dance music, traditionally reliant on spaces of congregation, would seem to be ill suited for an increasingly digital world. However, artists and collectives are finding ways to utilise the affordances of an online environment for their ends. Creating worlds, these virtual pioneers are making a space for dance music across digital networks.

With a reflection upon the architectural history of performance spaces used in popular music, Kronenburg investigates the role of the spatial in musical performance. From the improvised to the thoroughly planned, stage design has become an industry in its own right. With many hands involved in the process of conceptualisation, production and implementation, stages present all the complexities of traditional architecture and more.

Protests carried out over virtual platforms can have material effects. Then-President Donald Trump expected to find a sell-out crowd when he arrived for a campaign rally in June of 2020. Instead, over two-thirds of the venue's booked seats remained mute and empty.

What are the ways in which the music video reflects and shapes our lives? Carol Vernallis traces the dialectic between lived reality and artistic expression via the music video. Paying equal attention to the visual and auditory opens up a web of relationality that reveals as much about us as it does the artist.

In the second edition of their Video Vortex series, the Institute of Network Cultures expands its investigation into online video and digital distribution platforms. Sourcing contributions from across disciplines (including an article by For The Record research fellow Albert Figurt), Video Vortex Reader II presents a multifaceted study of the state and implications of online video beyond YouTube.

Staging an arrest, adopting and amplifying a catchphrase, and dawning the outrageous are some of the ways Rap artists are finding inroads to relevance. Becoming a meme can be an immensely powerful tool for online marketing. Here are some of the artists that do it the most.

Will popular video games such as Roblox and Fortnight become two of the hottest music venues on the planet? Rethinking live performances for a (post)pandemic future, video games give artists the ability to reach fans regardless of distance. In the interactive, virtual environment of the video game possibilities await to be explored, together.

The visual and the auditory bleed into each other beyond the music video. This exhibition at Kunsthal Rotterdam presented works of fine art that are inextricably tied to musical inspirations. A flourishing, artistic dialectic presented in unexpected ways.

MTV made the music video a (brief) fascination of media studies. In the time since the channel's launch, this initial enthusiasm has faded. In Music Video after MTV, Korsgaard brings a scholarly lens to the academically neglected medium. A mountain of untouched history means there is much to be analysed.

Dance music, traditionally reliant on spaces of congregation, would seem to be ill suited for an increasingly digital world. However, artists and collectives are finding ways to utilise the affordances of an online environment for their ends. Creating worlds, these virtual pioneers are making a space for dance music across digital networks.

In the second edition of their Video Vortex series, the Institute of Network Cultures expands its investigation into online video and digital distribution platforms. Sourcing contributions from across disciplines (including an article by For The Record research fellow Albert Figurt), Video Vortex Reader II presents a multifaceted study of the state and implications of online video beyond YouTube.

Staging an arrest, adopting and amplifying a catchphrase, and dawning the outrageous are some of the ways Rap artists are finding inroads to relevance. Becoming a meme can be an immensely powerful tool for online marketing. Here are some of the artists that do it the most.

Music videos aren't what they used to be. Contemporary artists and their collaborating directors are breaking down barriers and reaching fans in exciting and experimental ways. Despite relatively low return on investment, the format continues to be crucial for the development of an artist's identity.

Having an on-screen crush can be complicated. Even more so if that crush's actions conjure a long line of problematic appropriations of lesbianism. With Arianna Grande as a starting point, Rosanna Mclaughlin dives into the history of the entertainment industry's exploitation of lesbian sexuality.

Coachella stands as one of the world's most well known and well-attended music festivals, but headlining does not mean all that it used to. In addition to live performances, artists are putting out prolonged, digitally distributed visual accompaniments to reach their audience beyond the span of two weekends in the Coachella Valley.

Presenting signifiers of dysphoria and disassociation, Ariana Grande's video for "No Tears Left to Cry" prompts a dive into Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. What are the ways difference is sought out in a time when nothing seems to be here? How might these desires for something else be coded within whiteness and projected upon trans* subjectivities?

Breaking down the medium into its constituent parts, Carol Vernallis sets the music video apart from, but still in relation to, other similar mediums of artistic expression. Rather than treating the music video as subordinate to the song, Vernallis' approach draws out the elements that are unique to the platform and amplifies their socio-cultural and economic implications.

Restricted to their homes, unable to host large on-set production teams, artists are devising new ways of shooting music videos during a pandemic. With a low-budget aesthetic or an increased focus on post-production, pandemic-proof music videos show that artistry does not stop even under the most isolating of circumstances.

MTV made the music video a (brief) fascination of media studies. In the time since the channel's launch, this initial enthusiasm has faded. In Music Video after MTV, Korsgaard brings a scholarly lens to the academically neglected medium. A mountain of untouched history means there is much to be analysed.

The music video is a melange of high and low culture, living before, in, and beyond the contemporary. As a medium, it can be a space for the manifestation of the not-yet or a reaffirmation of the established order. Recognising the complexity of the music video as a mode of cultural expression, this collection takes an appropriately multi-sided approach.

Television has been crucial for the proliferation of the music video. This exhibition at Museo Jumex in Mexico City presented an artistic exploration of the medium.

Dance music, traditionally reliant on spaces of congregation, would seem to be ill suited for an increasingly digital world. However, artists and collectives are finding ways to utilise the affordances of an online environment for their ends. Creating worlds, these virtual pioneers are making a space for dance music across digital networks.

What are the ways in which the music video reflects and shapes our lives? Carol Vernallis traces the dialectic between lived reality and artistic expression via the music video. Paying equal attention to the visual and auditory opens up a web of relationality that reveals as much about us as it does the artist.

In the second edition of their Video Vortex series, the Institute of Network Cultures expands its investigation into online video and digital distribution platforms. Sourcing contributions from across disciplines (including an article by For The Record research fellow Albert Figurt), Video Vortex Reader II presents a multifaceted study of the state and implications of online video beyond YouTube.

Will popular video games such as Roblox and Fortnight become two of the hottest music venues on the planet? Rethinking live performances for a (post)pandemic future, video games give artists the ability to reach fans regardless of distance. In the interactive, virtual environment of the video game possibilities await to be explored, together.