Swedish audio streaming and music service Spotify plans to add music videos to its content lineup in the United States and Canada in the coming weeks. The popular streamer had since March 2024 been beta testing music videos in Europe, Asia, South America and other foreign territories and was satisfied with the results, calling the visual clips “a powerful way to build connections between artists and fans.” On average, “songs discovered with music videos are 24 percent more likely to be saved or shared in the following week by those who watched,” Spotify said of the beta test. The move seems to indicate Spotify wants to give its paid subscribers a reason not to switch to YouTube Music.

YouTube Music is bundled with YouTube Premium, and right now Spotify leads in the premium category, claiming 281 million paid subscribers as of Q3 reporting.

As of March, YouTube Premium and YouTube Music had a combined 125 million subscribers globally including free trials, according to a Google post. That’s about 25 million more than it had in March of 2024, but still less than half the paying subs Spotify managed to bag, largely without video — until now.

“On platform, users will be able to switch between audio and video with the tap of a button,” writes Variety, noting that “it’s unclear if the feature will be available to all subscriber tiers or just Premium users,” as the paid tier has been the focus of the international beta tests.

This month, Spotify entered into an audiovisual direct-licensing agreement with the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and launched an opt-in portal for the organization’s members to expand their licensing to include expanded audio visual rights in the United States.

Billboard points out that the NMPA deal came after several of its members — “including Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, Kobalt and their parent companies” — had struck direct licensing deals with Spotify.

During the Q3 earnings call the company put a new emphasis on video. Spotify’s outgoing CEO Daniel Ek said the company’s three verticals are music, podcasts and audiobooks, with video running through all three. “Time spent with video content has more than doubled year over year,” Co-President and Chief Business Officer Alex Norström said on the call, indicating visual media would be a driver to help “fulfill this new ambition of getting to a billion subscribers.”

Related:
Spotify’s Redesigned tvOS App Brings Podcast and Music Videos to Apple TV, Engadget, 10/27/25
Spotify Finally Brings Video Podcasts and Music Videos to Its Apple TV App, The Verge, 10/27/25