Spotify today announced that it has leveraged last year’s SoundBetter acquisition to create a marketplace for artists who make short, looping visuals for Canvas. The feature, which began rolling out widely last year, is an attempt to leverage technology, in order to make a more engaging alternative to the standard album art.
As Sarah pointed out, early reactions to the feature were mixed, though Spotify points to some new numbers around user engagement with the feature. According to the service listeners are:
- 145% more likely to share the track
5% more likely to keep streaming
20% more likely to add the song to their personal playlists
9% more likely to visit an artists’ profile page
Offering up a marketplace is part of a push to broaden adoption of the technology, by offering access to some top names who have created visuals for high profile artists, ranging from Kanye to Billie Eillish. Spotify will also be rolling out Canvas access to more artists across the globe as part of this push.
“Since Canvas is a unique format to Spotify, we want to make it as easy as possible for artists to find visual artists to help them create eye-catching visuals,” the company writes. “After selecting a designer, artists share details on the sonics of their track and their creative vision, which the designer then takes into account to create a custom Canvas tailored to meet their needs.”
Obviously anything that gets artists paid is probably a net positive in the world. Though with prices in the hundreds of dollars per track, this sort of thing gets very expensive, very quickly. It’s something musicians will have to weigh against the on-going issues around streaming compensation. Depending on the size of the artist/number of streams, the investment could, potentially, pay off.
This is the sort of bill that record labels traditionally foot (assuming they don’t have their own preferred artists on staff), though nothing is really a given in the music industry these days.