Uh, YouTube? Spotify just added full music videos
Spotify has taken a sweet chunk out of YouTube by adding full music videos to its audio streaming platform.
Available in beta for Spotify Premium users from today, the feature elevates the company's short looping Canvas videos, instead allowing users to "switch to video" from the album artwork to see the full clip. There's a limited catalogue of artists with music videos available for the beta launch; Mashable was easily able to find vids for a bunch of major artists from Beyoncé to Dua Lipa, Doja Cat to Charli XCX, RAYE to Reneé Rapp.
The feature is rolling out to 11 countries — the UK, Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, the Netherlands, Colombia, Poland, Philippines, and Sweden — with no plans yet for additional markets.
Spotify's music videos will be available through the app on iOS and Android devices, desktop, and smart TVs. To find them on Spotify, when you search and play a song, you'll see a new toggle reading "switch to video" where — if the song you're playing has a video uploaded to Spotify — it'll start playing instantly. From here, you'll also be able to "switch to audio" if you want to revert to background listening.
You can also check an artist's page to see if they have music videos, by scrolling down the page to find a carousel of them. At present, it's only a handful of major artists we can see that have music videos, and the newest videos we could find were from 2023, but as the beta test runs we're sure to see more added.
While watching, you can go to full screen (or "cinema mode") or leave it in the smaller version. If you're using a mobile device, you can turn to landscape mode just like any other video streaming app. And you can share the video to friends, just like a song link.
Rival music streaming services like Tidal and Apple Music have had music videos on their streaming platform for years. But, what does this mean for the giant of music video streaming, YouTube? First things first, the music videos are being hosted directly on Spotify, not being embedded from another platform like YouTube, Vimeo, Vevo, et al, so the company is directly diverting views from those platforms — Google, for one, won't be stoked about that. It's unclear whether Spotify will show music video play counts alongside streaming numbers, so the impact of a music video won't be explicitly obvious — a possible con for motivated online fandoms.
But giving Spotify Premium users more bang for their buck? Especially when it sets you back £10.99 per month? I'm here for that. It's one more perk for Premium, the chaser to Spotify's 2023 additions like Jam, which lets you listen to shared playlists with friends in real time, and the platform's AI DJ.
"At Spotify, we know that the most powerful time to reach fans is when they're engaging with the music. So Spotify is really the best place for fans to dive deeper into an artist's music," Alex Bousquet, associate director, consumer product marketing, told Mashable.
"Music videos is also bringing more value to Premium listeners. Recently, we've launched DJ and Jam in 2023, which are uniquely and only available right now to our Premium users. Music videos is another way for Premium subscribers to enjoy music on Spotify."
If you're in one of the 11 countries above, here's how to try out the new feature:
How to watch music videos on Spotify
- 3 min
- Spotify app on iOS / Android / desktop / smart TV
- Spotify Premium account
Step 1: Search for an artist or specific song on Spotify.
Step 2: If the artist has music videos hosted on Spotify they will appear in a carousel — scroll down to find it.
Step 3: If the song you have searched has a music video on Spotify, the "switch to video" toggle will appear over the artwork.
Step 4: Hit "switch to video" and it will instantly play.
Step 5: Press the "cinema mode" button to go full screen on desktop, or turn your phone to do so on mobile.
Step 6: To go back to background listening, hit "switch to audio."
Shannon Connellan is Mashable's UK Editor based in London, formerly Mashable's Australia Editor, but emotionally, she lives in the Creel House. A Tomatometer-approved critic, Shannon writes about entertainment, tech, social good, science, culture, and Australian horror.
