Spotify today announced that it’s bringing music videos (ask your parents, kids) to the streaming music service. With some caveats, however.
First is that this is somehow all in “beta,” though it’s not exactly clear what that means. It’s not like music videos are new. Or streaming video is new. It could be that the catalog of music videos is said to be “limited,” so maybe Spotify is just testing the waters before it spends more money on more music videos. But Spotify says you’ll be able to watch vids from artists like Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat, and Ice Spice, among others. Spotify does say “In this beta launch, we’ll continue to innovate and iterate based on feedback from both users and artists.”
Second, and bigger, is that music videos are, at launch, limited to Spotify’s Premium subscribers in 11 countries. Those are the U.K., Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Kenya. That’s it for now, with no indication of how soon other nations — including the United States — could come online. Europe makes up 38 percent of Spotify Premium’s monthly active users, according to the service’s fourth-quarter 2023 earnings report. North America hits 27 percent, Latin America 22 percent, and the rest of the world 13 percent, for a total of 236 million Premium subscribers, or a little more than one-third of its total user base of 602 million.
“So many times in my own experience and for countless others, music videos play a key role in hooking you: taking you from being a listener to leaning in and becoming a fan,” Charlie Hellman, Vice President and Head of Music Product at Spotify, said in a press release. “They’re an important part of so many artists’ tool kits, and it’s a natural fit for them to live in the same place that more than half a billion people choose to listen to music.”
If you’re in one of the supported countries and have access to the music videos, you can find them in the Spotify mobile app, on its desktop player, or on a TV app. Hit the Switch to Video toggle on a supported music track, and you’ll get the music video for that track.
And if you’re still waiting on high-res lossless audio from Spotify, keep waiting.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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