Spotify to Offer Music Videos on Its Platform

Spotify is set to introduce music videos on its platform "in the coming weeks," accessible to all its paying subscribers in the United States and Canada, a spokesperson announced on Wednesday.

This development reaffirms the trend of integrating video into audio streaming sites, which until now has primarily been for filmed podcasts.

Previously, music videos were available to a test audience on Spotify in several dozen countries.

"We will have more details to share soon," the spokesperson added.

Users will have the option to switch between audio and video modes seamlessly.

Video podcasts have become a new growth driver for Spotify, which boasts nearly 500,000 of them, as stated by Chief Operating Officer Alex Norström during the group's results presentation earlier this month.

According to Norström, over 390 million users have already viewed a video podcast.

Video has long been associated with music, dating back to the American Panorams of the 1940s (jukeboxes displaying short films), the scopitones of the 1960s in France, and the launch of MTV in 1981.

The cable network elevated the format to new heights, and video streaming sites picked up the mantle in the mid-2000s.

With this integration, Spotify is venturing into the territory of YouTube, which has been a major destination for online users looking to watch music videos for nearly twenty years.