Spotify, I owe you an apology — my smart TV finally got Spotify after years of waiting, and now I suddenly love its roster of music videos | Tech Radar
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Spotify, I owe you an apology — my smart TV finally got Spotify after years of waiting, and now I love its roster of music videos
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For the past decade you’ve been my loyal music companion, but despite my tumultuous relationships with some of your features, your unmatched ubiquity means I can freely use you across my devices — with the exception, until recently, of my TV.
My Hisense 43A6NTUK smart TV is one of my favorite pieces of tech, despite it not being in the same caliber as the best TVs we test here at Tech Radar, but it had been letting me down because of one thing: VIDAA OS didn't support the Spotify app.
Until now that is. Spotify launched on VIDAA TVs at the beginning of June, but I wouldn't have known this if I hadn’t been casually flicking through my TV’s app carousel. After waiting for the best part of two years for it to arrive, you can imagine how excited I was.
Since the best music streaming service landed on my TV not a day has gone by where I haven’t used it, and it’s filled a huge void. And something miraculous happened in the process: I now enjoy viewing music videos on Spotify.
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Prior to buying a smart TV, the Amazon Fire TV Stick was my streaming device of choice, and it has always supported the Spotify app. While I enjoy my playlists on mobile, streaming Spotify on the big screen offers an entirely different experience.
It’s not news that Spotify’s music video interface and I haven’t got along — its mobile experience is too clunky and disorganized for me — and I’ve always used You Tube to stream music videos as well as my favorite web shows. Even if it meant enduring a painful amount of ads, I’ve always stuck by You Tube’s side.
I’d gotten used to You Tube’s way of doing things in the absence of Spotify’s TV app, but as soon as that app arrived I fancied trying something different. The result? Goodbye You Tube.
Before now, I’ve never understood why I could never get along with the Spotify music video interface, but I could with You Tube; then it clicked. It wasn’t Spotify’s cluttered organization that was putting me off, it was far simpler than that: music video viewing isn’t necessarily designed for the mobile experience.
Though I only stream audio when listening through headphones, every song I play through my TV on Spotify is now more or less in video form, and I’ve been busy making the playlists to go with it.
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Music video viewing is a big part of my life, whether that’s for background listening, nostalgia indulgence, or for blasting on the big screen when I have friends around, and You Tube has always been my go-to.
I began by making playlists to mimic the nostalgia of music channels, but creating playlists on You Tube is a little fiddly, and there are all kinds of issues with the queuing system. And though you can make playlists without a Premium account, the ad interruptions ruin the viewing experience. So when Spotify launched on my smart TV, I put the pedal to the metal.
Before I knew it I had made five monster MTV-themed playlists spanning from the 1980s all the way to the 2020s, each packed to the brim with songs and their accompanying videos. That was my one rule: if it doesn’t have a music video, it doesn't go in the playlist. I haven’t used You Tube to watch music videos since, and the ad-free experience still feels too good to be true, but the joy I get from it goes beyond simply watching the visual accompaniments to my favorite songs past and present.
I consider myself a pop culture historian, and evoking the nostalgia of music channels is one of the defining elements of my music video obsession. For me, there’s no other feeling quite like bingeing music videos from MTV’s VMA peak era — think Bad Romance, Hot N Cold, Maneater. If you were there at the time, you get it.
But the music video is so much more than that. There’s a huge educational aspect for me, allowing me to step into the past to learn more about pioneering artists who paved the way for bigger and more successful acts. Using Spotify to house my video-centric playlists has been perfect for enriching my knowledge, and it also means I get to visit my parents’ youth, all while streaming old favorites I never knew had music videos.
On reflection, I guess there was never really a reason for me to dismiss Spotify’s music video integration — I just didn’t know how to use it to its full potential. I’m still not a fan of the viewing experience for mobile, but now that I know how to optimize my music video viewing, there’s no going back.
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Rowan is an Editorial Associate and Apprentice Writer for Tech Radar. A recent addition to the news team, he is involved in generating stories for topics that spread across Tech Radar's categories. His interests in audio tech and knowledge in entertainment culture help bring the latest updates in tech news to our readers.
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