COLOGNE — It is the leading unlimited-digital music subscription service, but Spotify is no longer an audio-only provider.
In fact, Spotify introduced video advertising back in 2014. But, as it gears up to go public, the company is turning up the volume on an ad offering, video, that can likely command higher premiums than audio.
“We’ve been an audio platform for the first 10 years of our existence. We’ve evolved to having short-form video,” Spotify’s sales head Brian Benedik tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“Some of our playlists are starting to embed video in to the playlist experiences … from artists, introducing themselves. The response from our user base has been very good so far.”
But, Benedik claims listeners are warming to being turned in to viewers, he also says the company has to work to switch on ad buyers to the format leap.
“We have to train our advertisers and partners that video is a great place to be on Spotify,” Benedik adds.
Spotify has grown from 20 million subscribers in two years and had more than 140 million people using the service between the free and paid options as of July, Bloomberg reported, generating sales of €2.93 billion ($3.45 billion) in 2016.
Digital music subscriptions have helped the music industry turn its total revenue positive again, following years of piracy woes.
This video was produced as part of Beet.TV leadership series from DMEXCO, presented by NBCUniversal. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
