There was a moment when 3D looked like the future of music videos. It was imagined as a cinema spectacle, with visions of IMAX screens and grand rooms in places like Port Vell in Barcelona. Yet while 3D didn’t become the dominant norm, the music video itself found fertile ground and grew, moving from television to YouTube. New aesthetics and contemporary storytelling now shape advertising and many corners of society, and fashion serves as a vivid example of how artists and their audiovisual work influence culture.
But where is this all headed? Is this a golden era for music videos? It may be, though gold often shines alongside plenty of tinsel and silver, some of which gleams just as brightly. This Monday, during a video clip roundtable organized by the Autonomous University of Barcelona, composer Àlex Pérez — known for the Catalan hit Supermercat by Lildami in 2022, which logged over a million clip views in Catalan — spoke about the changing face of the art form. A singer-songwriter attending the event framed the discussion around the outcomes that repeatedly hit the ground like a coin toss.
As an emerging artist, Pérez revealed he invested up to 3,000 euros for a single in an audiovisual piece. “You must rally friends who will work for little,” he said, adding that those funds rarely come back. Salvador Cufí, president of independent label Música Global, who collaborated with Pérez, offered the label’s perspective: many artists shoot their own videos, making the low-budget approach feasible. He noted the label’s roster includes Miki Núñez, Judit Neddermann, and Doctor Prats, acknowledging the risk of a losing bet yet embracing the potential payoff. YouTube remains a powerful channel for distributing these videos, with earnings reaching around a thousand euros per million views. Landing a video clip on traditional TV has become increasingly rare, underscoring a shift in how audiences discover music.
other miracles
There are also “spiritual” miracles born from very small budgets, such as Morad, whose clips generate millions of views without heavy spending. Audiovisual production played a crucial role in the expansion of a vast urban wave that helped push the musical mainstream forward years ago. Visuals amplify an artist’s presence, ensuring they stay in the public eye. In today’s scene, many artists now release videos alongside every new track, sometimes forgoing a traditional album cycle entirely.
Guillermo Enguita, a member of Sony Music’s audiovisual division, noted at the event that high consumption of music on YouTube encourages solutions that sit between a physical album and a video clip. This demand gave rise to visualizers — simple visuals designed to maintain a record’s aesthetic while a song streams on the platform.
Another notable aspect discussed by Pérez is the strategic importance of knowing whether a given song will become a video clip. The decision shapes the creative process in fundamental ways.
creation space
Big stars and their meticulously crafted audiovisual products remain lucrative, replicating the kinds of efforts associated with Rosalía and C. Tangana, albeit with investments that industry insiders say were never enough. The Catalan production company CANADA collaborated with many artists who first broke through with El Guincho’s indie classic Bombay in 2010. This company became a benchmark not only for videos but also for advertising, echoing many of the creative approaches used in clips.
At the conference, Anna Bacardit from CANADA emphasized that music videos retain artistic value while also shaping advertising and societal trends. She highlighted how creators observe, imitate, and eventually close the circle, citing Rosalía’s Malamente as a landmark single that helped redefine the project beyond just music and into a broader cultural moment.