According to a new report Spotify is finally ready to release its video-streaming service this week on Android mobile devices.
It's been a long time coming since it first announced it was getting into the podcast and video streaming game back in May of last year, but Spotify has been road-testing the service on a small number of its users over the last few months.
Interestingly it will be a mobile-only offering with the Android version coming out this week across the US, UK, German and Swedish territories and an iOS version to follow soon after.
Spotify has signed up a host of content makers to its brave new video venture, and is set to feature streamed goodies from the likes of ESPN, BBC, Comedy Central, Vice, ABC and Viacom. They're more likely to be shorts or clips than full episodes, mostly because they're being served on a mobile app which is more used to being listened to in the background rather than stared at for long periods.
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It's set to recommend clips it hopes will be relevant to the sorts of music that a user listens too, or specific music video content that matches up with their tastes. Spotify is also bundling together different videos into specific categories, like its evolving playlists. The examples given are 'News of the Week' or 'Lunchtime Laughs.'
According to the report it's also streamlining the ways it offers the video content after Spotify's beta testing found it was offering far too many disparate ways to get there.
It seems like a different tack than rival services like Tidal has taken, which offers exclusive music videos and concerts as part of its service. And with the YouTube behemoth offering a vast array of both music and video there is already a crowded market out there.
It's going to be interesting then to see how well this is picked up by the huge Spotify user base. It's got a whole host of listeners, some 75 million of them, but whether it is going to be able to turn them into viewers is up for debate.
