 It's the Metwork! Our next topic is something we always tend to talk about is what's going on at Spotify every month we have a little a little chat about them. Back in January we were discussing Marquis which we're going to come on to very shortly but what I want to do first is that there's been a lot of reports floating around over the past month that Spotify is working on adding music videos into its app. There's been reports that in the code now in the app code there is like an extra like button and feature where video would go. You can swipe across from music and from podcasts and there'd be video so they're now speculating that there might be some videos being added. We also know that the Joe Rogan podcast deal is happening there's going to be video on Spotify like exclusively so we're going to have to put that functionality in any way so are they going to post the wheel and include more videos and that's what it looks like because if we start doing it for adverts in the US UK and Canada you can now run video ads on the platform and they've been doing very well. 50% of advertisers use the tool it's only 11% in March. Wait so how many what videos are they showing already? Just you know like the the adverts the audio ads you can get on the platform on ad studio. Oh ads okay and now and now they're doing like actual video ads you can now promote think you can now promote products or what are they showing the video ads on I'm saying have they actually started using them or you're just saying now they have the ability to but when Joe Rogan comes is when they'll actually start. No they've been they've been using them it'd be like the you know where the canvas plays you have a little looping videos they get played in that. Interesting interesting having noticed that. So your 50% advertisers have been using this tool now and apparently a lot of spot for users are using it with the sound on not just muted because you can mute the sound on the ads on the video ads according to them that they've got a 1.9% ad recall with 2.2 times percent 2.2 times increase in brand awareness according to company stats so the advertisers seem to love it so much improvement on the audio aspect. So with the fact they're doing these video ads now it does seem natural progression that we're going to get more video content on the platform for more podcasts and for music videos and it's just another case of we never quite know which direction Spotify's heading in one minute it wants to be you know all in on audio the Netflix of audio but now here we are again tapping back into video they try to do it in the past like four or five years ago they bought a lot of startups that were in that space and also you did not pay us recently discussing the future of Spotify and what it needs to do to try and survive with the threats of TikTok on Rezo but I don't um video wasn't really sort of like on our radar again. No it wasn't but I'm not surprised because video only makes sense when it comes to the leverage that they're trying to build in the podcasting space because a lot of people watch podcasts I watch podcasts like when I first started listening to a lot of the podcasts that I watched most of them I actually started watching them on YouTube I never I still haven't listened to Joe Rogan podcast I've watched many of them on YouTube and then sometimes like listen or I walk around and use it like a podcast Joe Budden podcast same thing I watch a lot of I watch a lot of long form content slash listen like do both so it only makes sense and then if you're going to do it from the anchor point of a Joe Rogan then why not start to test out the recommended you know your recommendation engine and see what those stats can really look like you have to use this opportunity in this window to you know feed it back in because I know they know the value of video that's why they tried it before and just because they weren't they kind of failed doesn't mean that they they don't think it's valuable anymore they just knew the whatever route they were taking wasn't right or the timing wasn't right so they know the value of it this is it looks like that this is their way in yeah I think the podcast has to be the way in because music videos obviously they're not anything new other platforms offer that but if you can now get a suit of podcasts that have the video to you to watch it's actually going to get you're more engaged with staying on the app rather than looking their screen exactly because music videos which is what they were focused on that wasn't really all that interesting anyway the music videos don't have the appeal they used to know exactly I I don't even know yeah how many there's so many songs that I listen to and there's so few music videos I've seen this year you know so if that's a part of it and they probably some moving off of that traditional concept but probably discovering what I just said that they don't have the appeal that they used to and they make sense for a platform like YouTube where everything is video and then music video just happens to be a part of it but a main behavioral driver like a show is is a completely different thing and also you mentioned those ads I'm not really impressed with the stats although they are good they're early right and yeah very very early yeah so a huge part of that is just that the fact that people aren't used to it right just like any other platform oh I'm not used to ads on my email and now I'm used to ads on my email and and and now it's harder to get people to open their email oh I'm not used to this Facebook ad thing what's going on and Facebook ads are extremely cheap then they drive up Google ads it happens that's just the cycle so that's a huge part of it you're going to have that when you have a newer platform or a newer newer way of advertising on a platform and you have limited advertisers whether that's through to selection or due to natural selection through financial limitation or that either way it goes there's a small sample size but hopefully they continue to you know make it comprehensive but I think it will still follow that natural curve but they are more natural to do ads around podcasting as well too then the so I think Spotify is in a in a strong position they're really wiggling their way out of their music mishaps let's put it that way and it's through every and they're finding their way back through everything but music I would like to see them focus more less on music videos and more on little artists interviews and documentaries aren't exclusive to the platform because obviously Spotify has got an insane amount of access to these artists so you can have then the film vertically you know interview clips and weave them in with playlists of artists so you're playing their songs then one of their like interviews or a documentary will come on it's been made by Spotify and that just that would be so much more valuable I think it's be so much more interesting for them and certainly can easily do as well and just like obviously if you follow artists you can get a notification saying I've just dropped an interview with so-and-so or a new extended documentary because the album music beats one docs are very very popular and interviews and I feel like they should tap more into that and that would be yeah just do much better than music videos yeah they have the leverage to the infrastructure might be more natural once the podcasting thing is slowly set up in the videos is really put in there I would be more interested to see stuff like that