One media juggernaut is strolling away from music movies simply as one other walks towards them, each satisfied they’re making the sensible play in in the present day’s fiercely aggressive consideration economic system.
MTV died when it grew to become a actuality TV graveyard. Now the community is lastly admitting what everybody already knew by shutting down its music channels after 40 years. And Spotify, apparently sensing a possibility within the corpse’s still-warm sneakers, has determined that is the proper second to launch music movies within the U.S. and Canada.
Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek dropped the information on X with a wistful callback to racing residence after college to catch new movies on TV. It’s a candy reminiscence, certain, besides that specific cultural ritual died across the identical time folks stopped renting DVDs at Blockbuster and switched from AIM to texting.
What MTV pioneered in 1981 with linear programming and cable distribution, Spotify is now trying to recreate inside an on-demand music streaming interface. The place MTV’s viewers waited for scheduled blocks and VJ introductions, Spotify customers can now summon music movies within the app.
Nonetheless, the TikTok era by no means skilled that anticipation. They grew up with YouTube, the place each music video ever made sits three seconds away from every other music video ever made.
So what precisely is Spotify doing right here? The corporate spent years perfecting the artwork of unconscious audio consumption. You hit play, the algorithm takes over and all of the sudden it’s been three hours and also you’ve someway ended up listening to weird genres like bubblegrunge. Including movies may disrupt that whole circulate since they demand consideration and require your telephone as a substitute of letting it dwell in your pocket.
And from a enterprise standpoint, there’s a formidable competitor in YouTube, which has owned this territory for 20 years. They’ve confirmed zero curiosity in surrendering floor.
Spotify launched music movies to just about 100 markets in 2024 and the corporate says its information demonstrated “how video can elevate the listening expertise,” citing a survey that claims greater than 70% of customers imagine extra would improve the platform. The North American growth offers thousands and thousands of Premium customers entry to a catalog of official music movies, together with dwell performances and covers. The preliminary rollout is restricted whereas the characteristic is in beta, however “availability will develop shortly over the approaching months,” based on Spotify.
Perhaps Spotify sees one thing the remainder of us don’t. Perhaps there’s real demand for watching music movies inside the identical app the place you queue up your Saturday evening pregame playlist. Perhaps the children need their Spotify Wrapped to incorporate a stat about what number of occasions they watched Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” video.
Or perhaps that is simply one other streaming platform satisfied it must be the whole lot to everybody, including options to placate stakeholders till the core product buckles beneath its personal weight. MTV tried that too. Look the way it turned out.
