Guidelines

The better it is, the better the numbers can be,
in addition to lifts in profile visits and shares.

Guidelines
for Spotify Canvas
Available to all artists

About

Spotify® Canvas is a free platform feature available to all artists that enables the upload of up to 8-second seamless loop fullscreen background videos to be featured as screensavers in the Now Playing view of each of your tracks.

Requirements

Canvas is an 8-second visual loop that shows in a vertical format to fill the screen. It appears in the Now Playing View instead of your album artwork.

Your Canvas needs to be:

– 3 to 8 seconds long
– Vertical aspect ratio (9:16)
– Between 720px to 1080px tall
– An MP4 or JPG file

MAKE THE MOST OF CANVAS

Choose footage without talking, singing, or rapping. The clips are only 3-8 seconds long, so won’t sync with the lyrics.

Avoid rapid video cuts or intense flashing graphics. They may overwhelm the viewer.

Phone screen size is important. The edges may get cut off on some phones.

Consider excluding your song and artist name. It already shows in the Now Playing view in the Spotify app.

Try to tell a full story. You only have 8 seconds, but trimmed down music videos and incomplete stories can leave fans expecting more.

THE RIGHT TYPE OF LOOP

Continuous Loop has a satisfying seamless loop. Hard Cut has clear edit points (they can be artfully disguised). Rebound plays your clip forwards, then reverses it (an easy way to get a smooth loop).

CREATE A THEME

Connect your Canvas identity to your album art, profile picture, header image, or even playlists. You could even create a narrative across an entire release.

KEEP IT UPDATED

You can change your Canvas over time to tell a current story, explore different visions, or just to keep things interesting.

For more info, check out artists.spotify.com/canvas.