Spotify adds music videos in 11 countries, but not the US

Spotify is formally increasing its choices past simply audio with the introduction of music videos. The streamer is rolling out a beta program that provides premium subscribers entry to music movies on cellular, desktop and TV for a choose variety of tracks by artists like Ed Sheeran and Ice Spice.

In an e mail seen by TechCrunch, Sten Garmark, Spotify vice chairman and international head of client expertise stated: “We’re beginning with a restricted subset of the complete catalog, which incorporates 1000’s of music movies. Inside this subset, we aimed to prioritize a variety of genres and artists throughout our launch markets.” YouTube (after all) and Apple Music each already provide music movies, so this new characteristic helps Spotify match as much as a few of its largest opponents.

To look at a music video, Spotify customers listening to a music can click on “change to video” proper on the now-playing display screen. The music video will all the time begin the music again from the start, however customers can contact change again to audio at any level. Even when the music video performs by, Spotify will nonetheless queue the subsequent music as audio solely.

At present, the beta possibility is barely out there in 11 nations, chosen for a “variety of standards together with market dimension and the supply of native content material assist,” Garmark stated. Whereas the US did not make the minimize, the nations included signify fairly a world viewers: Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Netherlands, Poland, Philippines, Sweden and the UK. Customers from these nations should even have a premium account to observe music movies.

Rumors that Spotify might add music videos began final July following quite a few layoffs (and more have come since). This announcement is the primary time Spotify has introduced the existence of music movies on its platform. Nevertheless, a Reddit user posted three months again that they’d the “change to video” possibility on a single music: My Means, by Limp Bizkit.