Spotify Introduces Music Videos in Certain Countries

The digital music giant Spotify is integrating music videos into its mobile and desktop applications in select countries across the globe. The videos are closely tied to Spotify’s music library as it allows users to move between audio and music videos with ease, according to TechCrunch.

As of today, music videos will only be available in 11 countries for the beta stage of this release. The U.S. isn’t a part of the selected countries, which include Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, the Netherlands, Poland, the Philippines, Sweden, and the U.K.

In an email, Spotify’s VP Global Head of Consumer Experience Sten Garmark said, “For this beta rollout, we chose these markets based on a number of criteria including market size and the availability of local content support… Stay tuned as we hope to expand the catalog of music videos and increase availability to more countries.”

To make use of this added integration to the service, users need to have an active premium subscription and should be living in one of the 11 countries selected. This means free users will need to continue to move over to YouTube to watch music videos.

This update eliminates the need for users to search for music videos separately or scroll through to a different section within the app. Music videos can now be accessed straight from the “Now Playing” screen. When playing a song linked to a music video, users can simply tap the “Switch to Video” button to seamlessly transition to the video format.

Even if users are halfway through an audio-only track, the music video starts playing from the beginning and replaces the album artwork. The video can be expanded to full-screen mode, allowing users to rotate their phones for a landscape view.

By introducing this feature, Spotify isn’t just embedding YouTube videos or joining forces with third parties. Instead, it is hosting these videos directly and delivering them to users ad-free. However, when questioned about royalties linked to video format versus audio streams, Spotify chose not to comment.

Initially, there will only be a limited number of music videos available on the platform. However, Spotify has already gained distribution rights to add more videos in the future.

Garmark said, “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.”

The launch of this feature coincides with the timing of Universal Music Group’s decision to remove its songs from TikTok due to disputes over royalties.