Spotify is including music movies to its cellular and desktop apps in some markets. They’re tightly built-in with the corporate’s music library because the streaming large enables you to seamlessly change between audio and music movies in its cellular and desktop apps.

Nonetheless, music movies are solely out there in beta in 11 choose markets for now — and the U.S. isn’t a part of this preliminary rollout. Right here’s the total listing of nations the place you’ll discover music movies beginning right this moment: Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Netherlands, Poland, Philippines, Sweden and UK.

“For this beta rollout, we chose these markets based on a number of criteria including market size and the availability of local content support . . . Stay tuned as we hope to expand the catalog of music videos and increase availability to more countries,” Spotify’s VP International Head of Shopper Expertise Sten Garmark stated in an e-mail.

Along with dwelling in a type of nations, music movies additionally require an energetic premium subscription. Free customers nonetheless have to go over to YouTube to observe music movies.

Right here’s the way it’s going to work. As an alternative of looking for music movies immediately or searching movies in a separate part of the app, music movies could be began from the “Now Playing” display. Whenever you’re listening to a track that has a music video, you may faucet on a button that claims “Switch to Video” to… change to video.

The music video begins taking part in from the start (even should you had been in the midst of the monitor) and replaces the album paintings. If you wish to view the video in full display, you may rotate your cellphone to panorama.

For this characteristic, Spotify isn’t merely embedding a YouTube video or partnering with a third-party firm. The corporate is internet hosting these movies immediately and delivering them to its customers with none advert. When requested about royalties when a track is performed in video format in comparison with an audio stream, the corporate didn’t reply.

If you wish to return to background listening, you may faucet on the button that claims “Switch to Audio” to show off the music video. And should you watch the music video till the tip, Spotify will play the following track in your queue in audio.

On desktop, music movies seem within the right-hand column with details about the present track and artist. Spotify says that the characteristic can also be out there on TVs, the place it makes lots of sense. As a reminder, the corporate has launched apps for the Apple TV, Android TV, Hearth TV units, gaming consoles and several other sensible TV fashions.

At first, solely a restricted variety of music movies will probably be out there in Spotify. However the firm has already secured distribution rights so as to add extra movies down the highway.

“In our preliminary beta rollout, we’re beginning with a restricted subset of the total 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,“ Garmark stated.

The timing of this characteristic launch is fascinating as Common Music Group pulled out its songs from TikTok following a dispute over royalties. With music movies, Spotify is including extra video content material to its app, past Clips (brief movies of artists speaking to followers) and Canvas (looping album artworks).

On the identical time, Spotify can also be catching up with different streaming providers as music movies can be found in YouTube Music while you seek for a track or while you browse an artist web page. Apple Music additionally has music movies in a separate part on every artist web page. However, in each instances, it’s not as straightforward to change from audio to video.