Spotify wants to add another string to its considerable, perhaps overstretched bow — video. Presumably sat beside the music, podcasts, and audiobooks that it already offers, Bloomberg says that it's looking now to pay online creators for their videos so it can stick them on the app for users to peruse at their leisure.
That, of course, comes with a caveat. In order to pay the creators for their videos, Spotify is going to have to spend some money — and as Spotify rapidly becomes the most expensive streaming service that you can buy, will users really be willing to put more money on the line?
More new content for Spotify
Spotify hasn't been afraid to add more content to its app over the years, with the app no longer just offering music to its users. It's also not been afraid of making its users cough up for the increase in content — so much so that a subscription now costs $11.99 per month. Or, as you might also want to put it, about $2 on average more than the competition.
The Bloomberg report also points out the podcast spending circa 2019, when the firm bought podcast companies Gimlet Media and Anchor. That spending ended in tears, to some degree, seeing Spotify laying off "significant" numbers of its staff. Now, Spotify is looking to spend more money.
The spending on video would join the already available video podcasts, which Spotify says have seen 170 million viewers since they were first available. And, now that Spotify has an ad service to rival that on YouTube, Spotify seems to think that the time for video is now. Let's just hope this doesn't leave us paying more than we'd really like to be for the streaming platform.
Oh, and Spotify, one more thing — where's Spotify HiFi? Let's focus on that before chasing a different fox, please. And thank you.
