Spotify’s expansion into short-video continues apace. Having launched its ‘Clips’ tool last year for artists to add 30-second videos to their profiles and album pages, now it is testing surfacing those clips elsewhere in its app: playlists.
Screenshots obtained by Music Ally show clips from artists Sabrina Carpenter and Benson Boone appearing in a swipeable carousel at the top of Spotify’s ‘Pop Drive’ playlist.
The clips relate directly to their tracks in the playlist: a ‘Making of Espresso’ clip for Carpenter’s song ‘Espresso’ and a ‘Beautiful Things BTS’ clip for Boone’s ‘Beautiful Things’.
Carpenter is signed to Island Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group. That’s significant because UMG’s recent expansion of its partnership with Spotify hinted at plans to test new promotional features on the streaming service.
According to our sources, Taylor Swift – who uses UMG as her label partner – recently had the most viewed Clip in the feature’s (admittedly short) history.
However, Benson Boone is signed to Night Street Records and Warner Records, suggesting that playlist Clips is a feature being tested with artists beyond UMG’s orbit too.
Short video is currently a priority for Spotify, with its Clips feature at the forefront of its ambitions to do more with video.
“We are focused on winning discovery and we’re going to add as many ways that we can to improve the discovery of Spotify. So you saw us in the quarter add music videos. You’re going to see music clips in a bigger way,” CEO Daniel Ek told analysts in the company’s recent earnings call.
“Short-form music content is a big focus of ours. You’re going to see more video on the music side make its way into the product in 2024,” he added.
“You’re also going to see music clips show up in a bigger way where artists are using ways of short-form storytelling on video, to tell a story around their album or tell fans about a new album drop that they should be pre-saving.”
Surfacing Clips in playlists appears to be the first evidence of that. Spotify declined to comment on the record about the test when contacted by Music Ally.
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