Spotify has taken the next step in its mission to challenge YouTube’s powerful position in the domain of on-demand music videos. In the U.S. and Canada, all Spotify Premium subscribers can now watch music videos from major pop artists.
The expansion of Spotify’s music video ecosystem comes nearly two years after the platform first made those videos available in beta. Thanks to the latest update, U.S. and Canada-based Premium subscribers can locate available music videos by looking for relevant icons on the official artist pages for select acts. At the time of this post, the list of participating musicians includes TikToker-turned-pop star Addison Rae, rising K-pop outfit BABYMONSTER, and Galinda herself, Ariana Grande.
When a Premium user plays a song that has an available music video, they can watch it by tapping a “switch to video” icon. Of course, if they change their minds, they can simply “switch to audio.” It’s the same design that can be found across Spotify’s library of video podcasts, which now includes more than 500,000 multimedia shows.
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In a blog post announcing the music video expansion, Spotify pointed to the community-building power of those clips. “Music videos are a proven way to help build fandom. After a fan engages with an artist’s music video, they’re more likely to dive deeper into their artistry,” reads the post. “We’ve seen that when fans discover a track with a music video on Spotify, they’re 34% more likely to stream it again and 24% more likely to save or share it in the following week.”
Music videos are good for creators, but they’re also good for Spotify, too. The platform’s video podcast ambitions have paid off in a big way, but that medium becomes increasingly competitive with each passing month. As rivals like YouTube and Netflix seek their own video podcast libraries, Spotify is elbowing its way into a category YouTube has dominated for more than a decade.
YouTube has been the go-to home for music videos since the 2009 advent of Vevo, and it has capitalized on that status to the tune of billions of views. Spotify is still best known as audio streaming platform, but its video-related products hold great potential — and Premium subscribers from the U.S. and Canada can now take one of those features for a test drive.
