There's no greater rush than appearing as a contestant on The Price Is Right. A clip from the daytime game show, which aired last June and is now posted on YouTube, attests to the feeding frenzy of coruscating consumerism that host Bob Barker presided over daily.

Sitting in the second row, just behind a woman named Randi who is breathlessly bidding $750 on a new pie safe, are the Arcade Fire's Tim Kingsbury and Richard Reed Perry, grins glued to their faces. Both are wearing matching blue T-shirts sporting a toll-free number in hot pink lettering: 1-866-NEON-BIBLE.

The appearance created a music blog sensation. Stereogum's writers phoned the number and realized they could leave messages or speak with band member Will Butler, who'd dreamt up the hotline idea in the first place. It turns out the stunt was part of a series of web-based projects, revolving around a faux infomercial starring Perry and created with artist Tracey Maurice and director Vincent Morrisset to hype the March release of the band's sophomore album, Neon Bible.

With MTV devoting no airtime to videos and record labels slashing budgets, the most interesting video work seems to be coming from bands experimenting with their director friends. "The construct of a single, I don't even know if that's relevant," says Morrisset of the process. "There's never been a big scheme; it's really intuitive and fun. A lot of people [think] 'Oh, that's viral, there's a team behind it,' but it's just me and the band coming up with ideas." Among those ideas was a spooky interactive online video for the album's title track, starring singer Will Butler's disembodied head and hands.

Radiohead rang in the New Year with a 52-minute web cast called "Scotch Mist" shot by Adam Buxton and Garth Jennings, who also created a series of lo-fi web videos for tracks from the band's latest, In Rainbows. Those clips included the copyright-flaunting "15 Steps", which appropriated the climactic scene from Se7en and replaced Gwyneth Paltrow's severed head with singer Thom Yorke's.

At the moment, Arcade Fire and Radiohead are beacons in an industry big on self-aggrandizing production values but short on ideas. Nowadays, $100,000 is a high-end budget, with most videos costing anywhere between $50,000 and $2,000. For a commercial producer mining new directing talent or looking for a creative project after an uninspiring, bread-and-butter job, the music video route is less appealing than it once was. Execs - and young directors - are looking to web projects for inspiration.

"The good old days of doing videos are done," says Believe Media EP Gerard Cantor. "We still do one or two a month, but they are no longer the creative outlet they used to be. Now we're seeing a lot of Internet films popping up. And if those films are outside the :30 confines, there's more creative freedom because there's less money involved. Considering we get hired for creativity, it's our responsibility as producers to keep our directors inspired."

Similarly, producers at The Directors Bureau in LA prefer to work with creatively-focused bands. As a result, head of videos Lana Kim says they don't make money, but her young directors can choose projects. The company's veterans rarely shoot videos anymore, but last year Mike Mills helmed five conceptual videos for Blonde Redhead, and Roman Coppola shot the verité "Teddy Picker" for Arctic Monkeys.

"After a while, the struggle of doing video after video and putting so much of yourself into it and not making a living gets tiring and directors want to move on," says Kim. "At the same time, they always come back to videos."

Though she's seeing videos becoming more art-oriented than ad-friendly, last year the company scored when the clip for Feist's "1234" turned up on an iPod commercial, rocketing the Canadian singer up the singles charts. Director Patrick Daughters immediately started directing spots and has since helmed jobs for Zune, Motorola and Wrigley's.

Colonel Blimp founder John Hassay also believes videos are still creatively viable. He name-checks Dougal Wilson, Lynn Fox, Pleix and below-the-radar crossover Kristofer Strom, a Malmö-based animator whose hand-drawn "Hitch Hikers" for Minilogue was a YouTube hit last year. Hassay forwarded the video to Blinkink EP Bart Yates and Strom has been churning out spot work ever since.

"I've been a commissioner for a long time and since 1998 I've had commercial directors telling me, 'Oh, I'd love to do this!' Then you get to the shoot and they're saying, 'If only we had more money,'" Hassay bristles. "And I'm thinking, we don't have any more money; quite a lot of other guys can make it happen."

Ben Dickinson relates to the idea of video burn-out, but rather than retreat, he's refocusing his energy. The 26-year-old has helmed vids for The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem, and has explored other creative outlets through the directing collective he co-founded, Waverly Films. The crew's YouTube page, which they update with weekly comedy clips, has led to work with MTV and representation offers from commercial prodcos (three members are already signed; Dickinson to RSA in the US and UK).

He sees himself working more directly with bands and clients, and less with ad agencies and record labels. "More work will come from what directors want to be doing anyway," he says. "I would be excited about designing a whole campaign that involved writing and directing... I'm already having conversations with people more at that level. As much as I'm a director, I'm a consultant. And that's fine with me."

Believe Media http://www.believemedia.com
Colonel Blimp http://www.colonelblimp.com
The Directors Bureau http://www.thedirectorsbureau.com
Vincent Morrisset http://www.aatoaa.com
Waverly Films http://www.waverlyfilms.com