Since the arrival of TikTok, a lot has changed. Social media platforms including Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook etc have wasted no time in adopting its features like an infinite loop of vertically scrolling short videos.
Keeping the addictive part aside, it has offered many budding artists a platform to showcase their talent. Heck, it also made inroads to the music industry – a place where TikTok wasn’t meant to be when it started.
The latest to the list is the music-streaming app Spotify that seems to have been bitten by the same bug. Not to be left behind, the company has confirmed that it is testing a vertical video stream of videos that users will be able to scroll through with options to interact with the video by liking it or skipping it altogether.
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As of now the feature is available to select users and can be accessed by tapping on the Discover icon housed in the bottom bar. For most users, this seems to be housed between the home and search icon.
Omg for the first time in how long (?), @Spotify has added a FOURTH icon to their toolbar: Discover! #NewSpotify pic.twitter.com/XQL2jpkXYqNovember 24, 2021
The feature was first spotted by Chris Messina in Spotify’s TestFlight build, sharing some screengrab suggesting that the feature seems to be without any fancy gimmicks and is pretty straightforward.
But, where's the innovation?
Interestingly, Spotify was smart enough to have already done the groundwork for getting the content for this feed. This comes in from Spotify’s Canvas format. Introduced in 2019, Canvas offers artists to create videos that can go along with their videos on the Spotify app.
While the initial idea behind Canvas was to offer users a video rather than static album art while listening to the song. These short videos have been liked by many and thus Spotify merged both the features.
When asked by TechCrunch, Spotify said that “We routinely conduct a number of tests to improve our user experience. Some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We don’t have any further news to share at this time.” – thus not giving away any clear indication of key details like its public rollout, availability on iOS and Android devices etc.
That said, if the feature is expected to get a wider audience, it might not take long for the company to announce it. However, the important question that needs to be asked is about the lack of innovation and probably brands need to understand that mere adopting a copy-paste feature might not help them achieve TikTok-like success.
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