Watch and Listen: Introducing music videos on Spotify

[Luan]

Spotify knows that the listening experience is a way to connect artists with fans on many levels. But what if we could enhance these connections with a different perspective? 

With this in mind, Spotify is introducing a new and powerful way to listen to your favorite songs: Music Videos.

This exciting new feature is being rolled out in Beta for Premium users across more than 90 countries worldwide. At this point, Music Videos is with a limited catalog, but it includes hits from local artists and global ones like Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd, and Ariana Grande.

How to watch music videos on Spotify:

• Music Videos is being rolled out in Beta for Premium users in some specific countries. This includes Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Egypt and the United Kingdom.
• Music Videos is available for Premium users on iOS, Android, desktop, and TV devices. 
• You can access it through the Now Playing View, when listening to supported music tracks. You just need to tap the “Switch to Video” toggle and the music video will start playing from the beginning. To head back to audio-only mode, tap on “Switch to Audio”.
• You can watch the videos in either portrait or landscape modes, and it is also available for Picture-in-Picture (PiP) mode.

Considering it's in Beta, Spotify will continue to improve the new feature based on feedback both from users and artists.

Currently, Spotify is working on ways to improve the experience of switching the playback from music to video and vice-versa, adopting a TimeSync transaction and this update is being released to the users gradually. There is also a 18+ content enforcement to prevent minors have access to explicit content.

I hope you are as excited as I am for this new way to enhance your connection with your favorite artists. For any feedback on the matter you may have, you are more than welcome to share it with us below on this thread.

You can find the latest updates on the topic in the official announcement from the Spotify Newsroom here.

[Kiddnextdoor]

Still not available in Canada eh

[1Dillon3]

Put the music videos feature in the U.S PLEASE!!!!!!

[Djd711]

I hate the video feature, mainly because the video version always has inferior quality audio. On my Nvidia Shield I keep having to switch it to audio manually because it's defaulting to video. If you must push the video option, at least make it so you can turn it off in settings. There are zero settings in the TV app 😑

[techica8]

They are likely trying to compete with Tidal.

Tidal offers this AND Hi-Fi audio.

Sadly, Tidal's car app is not as great at Spotify's integration AND Spotify still has a bigger catalogue.

[mietfrei]

Please remove the home bar when you’re watching a music video and also please continue the music video playback modus when the next song also has a music video 

Plan

Premium

Device

iPhone

Operating System

ios 18

My Question or Issue

home bar while playing music videos

[LegallyGerman]

don’t listen to everyone else, this is a great addition, does it count as a stream tho?

[LegallyGerman]

does this count as a stream?

[incamper]

wth? I could have seen the music videos on YT since years. If I wanted this, I would buy a YT premium. I don't want it. So don't try to mess the UI up with things I don't want.

Make one flag in the settings saying "show video if available" and then leave me alone.

[robigouk]

Yes I'm pretty sure the video will count as a stream

[InsideJokes]

Spotify's October 15 press release said the music videos would be available in 85 countries. Which countries are included?

[Spike88814]

i dont even have the option to watch videos just can see the previews anyone else have this problem?

[julixcreator]

For me I don’t get to see “Switch to Video” button do I have to wait until the next update or not and if so when is it? 

[stefanstopko]

There needs to be an option to keep the video from closing everytime you skip (would be awesome to get a video-only mode so you don’t have to press the button every time you skip)

[Luan]

Hi, everyone!

First of all, thank you so much for all the feedback you're bringing to us here in the community. As I mentioned before in the main post, Spotify is working on ways to improve the experience when watching and listening to Music Videos.

Just to keep you in the loop, Spotify announced this week that they are rolling out this feature to more countries in the world, and it's going to be available in more than 90 countries worldwide in the next weeks.

Spotify also heard your feedback about the time sync transaction when switching from audio to video or vice-versa. Now, Spotify will try to equalize the timestamp, so you won't need to restart the music from the beginning when switching. Note that this is being released as a test, so a small portion of users may continue to drive the old experience too.

Last, but not least, Spotify is adopting an 18+ content enforcement for Music Videos and Podcasts Videos and as a result, minors won't have access to content that was marked by the provider as 18+.

Thanks again for your support on that!

Cheers! 🙂

[Gulerin]

I noticed the timestamp sync. That's a nice feature. I'm still missing the most important feature however: on desktop, when I view a music video, the next song is always switched back to audio mode. I want a "video-if-available

-album-art-otherwise"-mode. I know Spotify can do it, because the Android TV app does just that. Just CTRL-C/CTRL-V that to the desktop app, and I'll actually watch all those music videos.

[fede160493]

a mi me encanta lo unico que no tengo la opcion para cambiar a videos en la tv ojala que en una proxima actualizacion este disponible 

[fede160493]

ya está disponible 

[yulathh]

Don't understand all these comments being against this new feature. It's optional, so if you don't like it, just don't use it. Very simple. I find it a very useful feature in certain situations. Cool would be, once you switched to video mode, keep playing videos if available. So far you have to activate the video mode after each song

[fede160493]

es verdad al que no le gusta que se vaya 

[deejeekaa]

Do you also find it confusing and annoying that by switching from audio to video you get a pause and then a different version of a song?

I can imagine it’s a difficult thing to do to sync it up totally, but at least the track should be the same! You have this zillion of versions (sometimes actually the same audio) side by side in Spotify and now all of the sudden there are two under the same item… why? What if I like one and not the other?