Spotify Is (Slowly) Adding Music Videos to Its Catalog
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Music fans may soon have another reason to consider Spotify, as the service is introducing music videos to its mobile and desktop apps.
While the feature is only in beta right now — it’s confined to 11 countries, none of which include the US — it’s an interesting sign of things to come and could fill a gap that’s long been missing in the streaming service compared to two of its biggest competitors.
However, Spotify also appears to be doing this in a unique way, with tight integration that lets you easily switch between listening to a song and watching its music video without the need to hunt it down or open a separate link.
That contrasts with Apple Music and YouTube Music, both of which have offered music videos for several years — and even longer if you count the iTunes Store and YouTube itself — but don’t make them nearly as easily accessible.
With both Apple Music and YouTube Music, you’ll see music videos when searching for a song or browsing artist pages. Some albums also include music videos among their tracks. However, in every case, they’re treated as an entirely separate entry from the corresponding song title.
By comparison, Spotify appears to be linking songs and music videos together so that when you pull up one, you get quick access to the other. TechCrunch, which was among the first to report the news, describes them as “tightly integrated with the company’s music library as the streaming giant lets you seamlessly switch between audio and music videos in its mobile and desktop apps.”
Instead of searching for music videos directly or browsing videos in a separate section of the app, music videos can be started from the “Now Playing” screen. When you’re listening to a song that has a music video, you can tap on a button that says “Switch to Video” to … switch to video.
Romain Dillet, TechCrunch
You’ll need a Spotify premium subscription to access these music videos. That’s likely because these aren’t just embedded YouTube links. Spotify hosts these videos and streams them from its own servers, entirely ad-free.
According to TechCrunch, when you switch to a music video, it will start playing from the beginning, regardless of where you were in the corresponding audio track. The album artwork will be replaced with the video, and you can bring it to a full-screen view by rotating your iPhone, similar to how this works in Apple Music.
Users will be able to hit a “Switch to Audio” button to return to the audio track at any point during the video. If they watch it to the end, Spotify will switch back to audio mode automatically and continue with the next song in the queue.
So far, Spotify has only rolled out a limited number of music videos in select countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, the Netherlands, Poland, the Philippines, Sweden, and the UK, but Spotify VP Sten Garmark said this is just the beginning.
In our initial beta rollout, we’re starting with a limited subset of the full catalog, which includes thousands of music videos. Within this subset, we aimed to prioritize a wide range of genres and artists across our launch markets. Stay tuned as we hope to expand the catalog of music videos and increase availability to more countries
Sten Garmark, Spotify VP and Global Head of Consumer Experience
In addition to the desktop and mobile apps, Spotify adds that music videos will also be available in places where it will be even more useful: on supported smart TVs and set-top boxes, including the Apple TV.
