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Spotify It is adding music videos to its mobile and desktop apps in some markets. It’s so closely integrated with the company’s music library that the streaming giant lets you easily switch between audio and music videos in its mobile and desktop apps.
However, the music videos are only available in beta in 11 select markets at the moment – and the US is not part of that initial rollout. Here’s the full list of countries where you’ll find music videos starting today: Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Netherlands, Poland, Philippines, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
“For this beta, we selected these markets based on a number of criteria including market size and availability of local content support. .. Stay tuned as we hope to expand… Music video catalog and increased availability to more countries.
In addition to living in one of those countries, music videos also require an active premium subscription. Free users still have to head to YouTube to watch music videos.
Here’s how it will work. 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 the button that says “Switch to video” to… Switch to video.
The music video starts playing from the beginning (even if you’re halfway through the track) and replaces the album artwork. If you want to watch the video in full screen mode, you can rotate your phone to landscape mode.
For this feature, Spotify doesn’t simply embed a YouTube video or partner with a third-party company. The company hosts these videos directly and delivers them to its users without any advertisement. When asked about royalties when playing a song in a video format compared to an audio stream, the company did not answer.
If you want to return to background listening, you can tap the button that says “Switch to Audio” to stop the music video from playing. And if you watch the music video until the end, Spotify will play the next song in your queue acoustically.
On desktop, music videos appear in the left column with information about the current song and artist. Spotify says the feature is also available on TVs, where it makes a lot of sense. As a reminder, the company has released apps for Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV devices, gaming consoles, and several smart TV models.
Initially, only a limited number of music videos will be available on Spotify. But the company has already acquired the distribution rights to add more videos in the future.
“In our initial beta, we started with a limited subset of the full catalog, which includes thousands of music videos. Within this subset, we aimed to prioritize a broad range of genres and artists across our launch markets,” Garmark said.
The timing of the release of this feature is interesting as Universal Music Group pulled its songs from TikTok after a royalty dispute. With music videos, Spotify is adding more video content to its app, beyond Clips (short videos of artists speaking to fans) and Canvas (repeated album artwork).
Meanwhile, Spotify is also catching up with other streaming services as music videos are available in YouTube Music when you search for a song or when browsing an artist page. Apple Music also has music videos in a separate section on each artist page. But, in both cases, it is not easy to switch from audio to video.
Image credits: Spotify
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