Spotify opened direct video uploads to artists through the Spotify for Artists dashboard on Wednesday (June 17), rolling out the feature in beta to tens of thousands of artist teams with broader access expected throughout the year. Artists in the beta can upload official music videos, live performances, studio sessions, and covers, all of which Spotify describes as “royalty-bearing and may be chart-eligible.” The move marks the first time artists can bypass labels and distributors entirely to get video content onto the platform, though Spotify made clear that delivery through labels and distributors remains “the primary delivery path for audio and video music content on Spotify.”
The engagement data Spotify shared alongside the announcement is the clearest signal of why the company is making this push. After streaming a video, listeners stream that song 64% more often over the following three weeks on average, and are 1.4x more likely to save, share, or add it to a playlist. Those listeners then go on to stream the rest of the artist’s catalog 57% more over the same period. For an artist’s most engaged followers, which Spotify calls “super listeners,” streams rose 62% in the three weeks following a video stream, equating to more than an hour and 40 minutes of additional listening time. Because uploaded videos are royalty-bearing, artists earn from both the video stream itself and the listening activity that follows.
The practical requirements are straightforward. Videos must be uploaded in landscape 16:9 format, tied directly to a specific song or release, and contain music throughout. Visualizers, lyric videos, multi-song concerts, and videos without music are not currently supported. Once uploaded, Spotify will automatically generate short-form previews for use across the platform, a change that comes alongside the company ending support for new Clips uploads, the short-form video feature it launched in 2023. Existing Clips will remain available, with artist profile Clips tabs transitioning to a Video tab over time. Uploaded videos can surface in Spotify’s personalized Videos For You playlist, in editorial playlists including Today’s Top Videos, Live Performances, and Video Covers, and on artist profiles, release pages, and the Now Playing view. Early uploads in the beta have come from artists including Hazlett, who posted a live performance of “Blame the Moon,” We Three with a cover of “Drops of Jupiter,” and Bebe Rexha with the official music video for “Hysteria.”
The context here matters. Spotify has been building its video infrastructure steadily since launching music videos in beta across 11 markets in March 2024 and extending them to Premium users in the US and Canada in December 2025. Until this week, those videos had reached the platform only through labels and distributors. Independent artists have had access to video delivery through DistroKid’s DistroVid service since June 2025, but direct upload through Spotify for Artists is a different proposition entirely: it removes the distributor layer for artists who want to control their own video release pipeline. Spotify is also reportedly in talks with festival promoters over live concert streaming rights, which would mark its first move into live video and put it in more direct competition with YouTube and Amazon Music, both of which have invested in festival live streaming for years. The direct upload beta, the live streaming conversations, and the Q1 2026 earnings call on which Co-CEO Gustav Söderström compared the current AI and video opportunity to the iPhone era all point in the same direction: Spotify is building toward a more complete entertainment platform, and video is central to that ambition.
