Image Credit: Chris Messina

The new vertical Spotify feed in the mobile app uses Canvas videos to help listeners discover new music via short previews.

TikTok‘s short-form vertical video feed has been copied by Instagram with Reels, YouTube with Shorts and many other platforms. Next up may be Spotify. The new feature was first spotted by Chris Messina, a beta tester of Spotify for iOS.

The new Discover tab can be found in the navigation bar at the bottom, between Home and Search. Tapping the icon takes you right to the feed. As shown in the video above, Discover is a vertical feed of music videos, that much like TikTok can be liked or scrolled past to skip. Messina told TechCrunch, tapping the three dots to the right of the heart icon pulls up the full song. It seems the videos are based on Spotify Canvas.

Canvas was first introduced by Spotify in 2019. The feature replaces the static album artwork with a 3-8 second video loop on the Now Playing screen of the mobile app. Spotify says Canvas increases streams, shares, playlist adds, saves and profile visits among music with looping videos. With the feed only bringing up tracks with Canvas, it’s now more important than ever to upload a video to accompany your track, as not only might it increase key metrics for those listening, it could also introduce a whole new audience to your music.

TechCrunch contacted Spotify for further information on the feature, asking whether they plan to roll the feature out further, whether it will be available for iOS and Android, which markets they’re planning, and more. Spotify declined to share any details on the new feature, but confirmed via a statement that they were exploring the idea of a vertical video feed.

At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort 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.

Spotify spokesperson to TechCrunch

As TikTok is with video discovery, Spotify Discover could be a great way for listeners to find new music, and for artists to increase their audience. The feature is still in testing and there’s no guarantee it’ll end up in the final app update. This isn’t the first social media influenced feature we’ve seen from Spotify. Last year, Spotify tested adding Stories to playlists. Spotify Stories never expanded to all users.

Upload your own music to Spotify for free and find out how to add a Canvas here.