Spotify video appearing on Android this week

The service will be available only in the USA to start with, but plans to distribute content to the UK, Germany and Sweden are in the pipeline.

According to the report Spotify aren’t yet launching video content for profit, now videos won’t feature advertisements.

Spotify customers in these regions will soon be able to watch video content from various partners, including BBC, Comedy Central, ESPN, Maker News, MTV, Vice News.

Spotify has been promising a video component for quite some time. Instead, it’s a play to keep you engaged, which Spotify hopes will encourage you to spend more time within the app (which in turn might encourage you to pay for Spotify if you aren’t already). As to what exactly the video content will be is as yet unknown but according to the Wall Street Journal it will most likely consist of short clips including snippets of Jimmy Kimmel Live and contextual clips such as Epic Rap Battles from Maker Studios. Video content will be available only on the mobile apps and not the web player or desktop apps. “So there are no particular recipes for how to get this right”.

“Obviously our primary user is a music fan, and they are not necessarily leaning in and looking into the app”, he said. That might seem like a lot, but Spotify has to compete with YouTube, which boasts more than 1 billion users.

Right now, Spotify makes money by selling an ad-free subscription service, or by showing ads to nonsubscribers. The new video offering will be mobile only.

“This [launch] is fundamentally about giving music fans what they want”, Rajaraman said. We are doing fine on monetisation.