Spotify today announced that it’s bringing music videos (ask your parents, kids) to the streaming music service. With some caveats, however.
First is that this is somehow all in “beta,” though it’s not exactly clear what that means. It’s not like music videos are new. Or streaming video is new. It could be that the catalog of music videos is said to be “limited,” so maybe Spotify is just testing the waters before it spends more money on more music videos. But Spotify says you’ll be able to watch vids from artists like Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat, and Ice Spice, among others. Spotify does say “In this beta launch, we’ll continue to innovate and iterate based on feedback from both users and artists.”
Second, and bigger, is that music videos are, at launch, limited to Spotify’s Premium subscribers in 11 countries. Those are the U.K., Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Kenya. That’s it for now, with no indication of how soon other nations — including the United States — could come online. Europe makes up 38 percent of Spotify Premium’s monthly active users, according to the service’s fourth-quarter 2023 earnings report. North America hits 27 percent, Latin America 22 percent, and the rest of the world 13 percent, for a total of 236 million Premium subscribers, or a little more than one-third of its total user base of 602 million.
“So many times in my own experience and for countless others, music videos play a key role in hooking you: taking you from being a listener to leaning in and becoming a fan,” Charlie Hellman, Vice President and Head of Music Product at Spotify, said in a press release. “They’re an important part of so many artists’ tool kits, and it’s a natural fit for them to live in the same place that more than half a billion people choose to listen to music.”
If you’re in one of the supported countries and have access to the music videos, you can find them in the Spotify mobile app, on its desktop player, or on a TV app. Hit the Switch to Video toggle on a supported music track, and you’ll get the music video for that track.
And if you’re still waiting on high-res lossless audio from Spotify, keep waiting.
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