Back in 2024, Spotify stepped into YouTube Music’s shoes by launching in-app music videos to limited regions, leaving the US and Canada out of the equation, but that’s now changed.
Starting today, music videos will finally be available in beta to Premium subscribers in the US and Canada after nearly two years, allowing users to switch between audio and visual streaming. The update lands very shortly after the great success of Spotify Wrapped 2025.
In Spotify’s blog post, the company shared its excitement about the North American rollout of music videos, describing the impact of visual accompaniments to music listening:
“For decades, music videos have done more than just accompany a song; they’ve shaped style, started conversations and helped build fandom. This expansion gives millions more listeners access to a catalog of official music videos and also introduces new video formats like live performances and covers”.
However, it’s not just the regions above that get access to music videos in the app. Along with the US and Canada, music videos will also expand to Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Uganda and Venezuela starting December 9. Even better news, these videos are easy to enable across devices.
When you start playing a song in Spotify on mobile, desktop or TV, you have the option to press the ‘Switch to Video’ button and the music video will pick up where the song left off.
There is no one to ignore that the expansion of music video access is another move by Spotify to expand its services, but music videos on Spotify have really split subscribers down the middle.
Spotify wants to be YouTube
Spotify is one of the best music streaming services for a ton of reasons, but music videos aren’t one that many subscribers are excited about, and those concerns have existed since day one.
When Spotify first introduced music videos to the user experience, it invited a lot of comments about the risk of not living up to certain expectations, with subscribers begging, ‘don’t ruin it like Instagram’ on the official Spotify Community forum. The other main concern, and one that resonates the most with me, is other services offering a better music video ecosystem.
For many music lovers, myself included, Spotify isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I hear ‘music videos’, because let’s face it, YouTube has dominated the music video field for the past 20 years, making for a smoother viewing experience. More often than not, Spotify’s music videos feel more cluttered than helpful.
Despite these concerns, there are plenty of users out there who have welcomed the integration of music videos simply because they like having the ability to switch between audio and visual streaming. But whether you want them or not, Spotify is doubling down on its commitment to bringing videos to its subscribers, and I feel like this isn’t the end yet.
What are your thoughts on music videos on Spotify?
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