Will the video clip resist the push of TikTok, or will it succumb to the syncopated immediacy of the format championed by the younger generations? The question remained in the air during the round table on the video clip industry held this Monday at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in an auditorium occupied by students from the Faculty of Communication. The sector is in good health in Catalonia, as shown by the recent international successes of artists such as Rosalía or C. Tangana, who have in common having built their own image by mixing their music with all the audiovisual elements at their disposal.
“The destination format and how people consume it is what is changing the video clip,” explains Guillermo Enguita, from Sony Spain, and puts on the table the main variable to understand where an innovative sector is headed by definition. Innovation that, for example, is behind the experiments that the music giant has been carrying out for years with vertical content adapted to TikTok.
Adapting to the new formats is mandatory if one takes into account the meteoric decline in audiences that YouTube is experiencing, and which was quantified by Salvador Cufí, from the Música Global production company, responsible for groups such as Sopa de Cabra, Buhos or Els Catarres: “Before of the pandemic, the most viewed video clip in Catalan had 14 million views”, a figure that has been reduced to one million in the case of Supermercat, the video clip starring Lildami that became the most viewed in 2022 with just one million views. million views. Figures that can be assimilated to the entire sector and that Cufí expressed after expressing his concern about the lack of its own space for the broadcast of video clips like the one that existed years ago on channels such as 40TV, MTV or TV3 itself.
“I don’t know where we’re going, the only thing that’s clear is that YouTube is dying,” said singer-songwriter and music producer Álex Pérez, who at 24 is the author of the aforementioned and successful Supermercat de Lildami, as well as collaborating with musicians. like Miki Núñez, Nil Moliner and Samantha. “Rosalía is nominated for the best concert of the Latin Grammy Awards for a performance she gave on TikTok”, a reality that forces producers to make shorter songs and faster video clips.
The million dollar question came down from a young student attending the event: if a video clip should last around three minutes, how do you fit it into TikTok tempos if people can’t even last two minutes in this format? “Video clips as such in TikTok format, I don’t know if there will be any,” reasons Guillermo Enguita, who does not believe that artists “make 30-second songs.” Instead, he brings up the concept of a visualizer, a visual aid that supports all the songs on the album. “It’s not a video clip, but it gives you clues.”
There is so much content and it is consumed so quickly that it is impossible to have “a total impact,” says Anna Bacardit, a producer at Canada, the agency that has accompanied Rosalía since her super-famous Malamente, and has produced video clips for artists like Dua Lipa or Tame. Impala. You can look for virality “with TikTok choreographies that will later be repeated, ideas that are not even video”, or have a very specific visual image that represents you as an artist, “an impact that lasts over time”. Two options to try to survive before the tune “TikTok killed the YouTube star” comes on.
