There has been talk about the death of the music video for a long time, but just take a look at YouTube to see that it has never stopped being very much alive (Shakira and her ‘Dai Dai’ say hello). Spotify has just launched Music Video Charts Global, a daily ranking with the 50 most viewed video clips on the platform, in a new attempt to bring this format to subscription streaming.
The release comes with several changes for the artists, Billboard reports. From now on, teams will be able to upload complete video clips through Spotify for Artists and also “pitch” them to the editorial team, as is already the case with songs, to try to sneak them into playlists such as Best New Videos, Today’s Top Videos, Live Performances or House Party.
Spotify assures that the bet makes sense because videos increase music consumption. According to company data, a user is 64% more likely to play a song after watching its official video clip or a live performance. Additionally, they are 1.4 times more likely to save or share the track and 57% more likely to continue listening to the artist’s catalog.
The movement does not come from nowhere. At the beginning of the year, Taylor Swift premiered the video for ‘Opalite’ first on Spotify and Apple Music, before uploading it to YouTube, making it the first major release designed for this new strategy of streaming platforms. That maneuver, linked to changes in the counting of video clip reproductions for Billboard, served as a preview of where Spotify wanted to go.
In reality, Spotify has been testing the waters for years. First the Canvas arrived in 2019 and then the Promotional Clips. But it was in 2024 when the platform announced the arrival of complete music videos, a movement that placed it for the first time as a direct rival to YouTube in this field. Now, with a specific ranking for videos and tools to promote them, that strategy goes one step further.
