Spotify expands music videos to 85 new markets – Music Business Worldwide

Spotify is taking the next step in its effort to become a video platform, announcing on Tuesday (October 15) that it’s expanding music video streaming to 85 new markets.

Spotify didn’t specify which countries or regions are included in the rollout, but noted that the new offer is available only to Premium subscribers, and comes with “a limited catalog of music videos.”

The Sweden-headquartered company initially announced the launch of music videos in beta back in March, when it offered the service in 11 countries – the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Kenya. It later added Egypt to the list.

In a blog post, Spotify said that music videos increase engagement on the platform, citing data showing that users who discover a song and then watch the video are 34% more likely to stream the song again the following week, compared to users who only streamed the audio. Songs discovered through music videos are 24% more likely to be streamed or shared the following week, Spotify said.

Spotify is also expanding the features that come with music videos, including new tags indicating that a given song has a video option. Music videos will now also surface in search results.

Additionally, users will be able to toggle “seamlessly” between the video and audio-only versions of a track, Spotify said, meaning that if a user switches from audio to video, the song will pick up at the same point in the video where the audio track left off.

Videos will also be available in full screen, if the user tilts their mobile device to landscape mode.

Spotify says it plans to launch the music video feature in yet more markets, and further expand music video features.

The move is the latest sign that Spotify aims to increase the value it provides subscribers as it increases prices in numerous markets worldwide.

Earlier this year, co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek said that Spotify looks at the “value-to-price ratio” to determine whether or not it can raise prices in a given market.

“So long as we are able to bring more value to our consumers, then we should have the ability to raise pricing.”

Daniel Ek, Spotify

“So long as we are able to bring more value to our consumers, then we should have the ability to raise pricing,” Ek said during an earnings call.

After keeping prices static for a decade as it built its subscriber base, Spotify last year implemented the first of what would become a series of price hikes across numerous markets, including the US, UK and Europe.

“When user growth… slows down… then price increases become [an] even more important tool in the toolbox,” Ek said on the earnings call.

To improve its “value-to-price ratio,” Spotify has expanded into various new media in recent years, including podcasts and audiobooks. It launched video versions of podcasts globally in 2020.

However, not everything Spotify has done in that effort has sat well with the music industry. Its decision to bundle audiobooks with music in its Premium subscriptions has resulted in pushback by music rights holders in the US, where DSPs can pay out lower mechanical royalty rates on bundled music.

That decision is now the subject of a lawsuit by The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC), which collects mechanical royalties from digital service providers in the US.

In May, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) sent a letter to Spotify, warning that the streaming service  had failed to secure licenses for lyrics, videos, and podcasts appearing on the service.Music Business Worldwide