Home › What is a Spotify Canvas?
A Canvas is the short vertical video that loops behind your track in Spotify's Now Playing view, replacing the static album art. It is three to eight seconds long, it plays every single time someone opens your track, and it is the cheapest piece of screen real estate an independent artist controls.
Spotify accepts a 9:16 vertical video, 3–8 seconds long, at least 720 px wide, as MP4 (or a static JPEG). There is no audio track — the Canvas is silent motion under your music. It displays on mobile Now Playing and in shared clips of your track.
Through Spotify for Artists: open the release, choose the track, and upload the Canvas file — no distributor involvement needed, and you can swap it at any time. Every track on a release can carry its own.
A Canvas repeats dozens of times during one listen, so the craft is in the seam and the sync. A loop whose last frame flows into its first reads as designed; a visible cut reads as a glitch by the third repeat. Motion that lands on the track's beat grid feels like part of the song rather than wallpaper. And because the Canvas plays from the moment the track opens, it pairs naturally with the hook — the passage listeners came for. Spotify's own artist materials have reported higher shares and saves for tracks with a Canvas; treat the exact figures as marketing, but the mechanism — motion holds attention — is real enough.
A Canvas built around the hook starts with knowing where the hook is. The finder marks your three strongest windows, free.
Find the seconds your Canvas needs — freeBetween 3 and 8 seconds, looping for as long as the track plays. Aim for a loop length that divides evenly into your tempo so the repetition lands on the grid.
Uploading is free through Spotify for Artists. Producing one is where cost varies — from a cropped video shoot to a rendered loop built from your artwork, which is what the Release Kit does.
You can crop 8 seconds of it, but arbitrary excerpts rarely loop cleanly. A section chosen for its seam — or a loop designed from your artwork — reads far better on repeat.
Each track can carry one, and tracks without one fall back to album art. Prioritize the single and anything you're pushing to playlists — those are the Now Playing views that matter most.
The three strongest 15-second windows in your track.
Editorial pitches, curators, and what you control.