Spotify edges further into social video with new Stories feature

“I see video as a megatrend,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said back in February 2017.

Around 100 million hours of video are watched every day on Facebook. But as with most platforms, 85% of these are watched with the volume off.

Studies also show that videos that feature people in the first three seconds increase the emotional intensity by 133%, and videos with text are 11% more likely to be viewed and have 28% higher rates of completion.

The rapid growth of video use on social media not only adds to user stickiness  – on Twitter, for instance, a video tweet is six times more likely to be retweeted than a photo tweet – but an important money-making ploy.

Especially for the Stories format that exists across the major social media platforms.

Facebook, for instance, reveals that 3 million advertisers have used its Stories feature.

The user numbers are impressive. Both Facebook and Instagram Stories pull 500m each day.

Snapchat gets about 191 million, 90% of its users are aged 13—24, with 51% identifying as female.

So it’s not surprising that Spotify wants a piece of the Stories action.

This week it was reported that the Swedish streaming service is allowing influencers, on a trial basis, to include videos and album artwork in their public playlists.

The first to gain access to the feature is makeup and fashion identity Summer McKeen in her playlist of favourite songs “All Time Besties”.

She has four million followers on YouTube, Instagram and Spotify, and encouraging them to turn onto Spotify.

According to TechCrunch, which broke the story, the streaming giant is planning to expand the feature for other influencers across entertainment, lifestyle and music.

“This initial group of testers is being determined by a variety of factors — including follower count, how engaged their followers are and how active the influencer in question is on Spotify.

“Mckeen was selected because she’s someone who likes to make playlists on her own and has many user-generated playlists she shares with fans.”

At this stage, it’s not available to musicians.

A Spotify spokesperson confirmed to the title: “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 path for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We have no further news to share on future plans at this time.”

TechCrunch noted that last year Spotify tapped into the Stories format with Storyline, which allowed artists to interact with fans on what inspired their songs and providing more insight.

It remains only available for select artists.