Spotify Apple TV app

Photo Credit: Li Lin

Spotify launches its new, redesigned Apple TV app, “rebuilt from the ground up,” featuring the ability to watch music videos and podcasts.

Spotify has unveiled its redesigned Apple TV app. The company says the newly launched version has been “rebuilt from the ground up for a faster, smarter, and more visual experience.” The app boasts a slew of new features, including a refreshed design, and the ability to watch video podcasts and music videos. It also comes at a time when YouTube’s most popular platform is TV—as video podcasts drive growth.

Users will see a “switch to video” prompt that appears when a song being listened to has an associated music video, similar to listening to music on YouTube. Video versions of podcasts work similarly, and users can change playback speed.

The updated Spotify app also offers remote control via Spotify Connect, Spotify DJ recommendations, lyrics, seamless playback, and queue management. Other features include a refreshed design native to tvOS, and a slew of overall video improvements.

Note that you’ll want to download the update manually via the App Store, as the new version won’t roll out via automatic updates until mid-November. While the ability to watch music videos is still rolling out in the U.S. and Canada, the feature has already expanded to 97 countries around the world—so look for it soon, if yours doesn’t yet include it.

Spotify users’ experience on Apple TV has been a contentious subject, with a pretty significant gap between the Spotify app and the Apple Music app on tvOS. A quick Reddit search reveals lots of users venting their complaints about everything from the old app’s frustrating navigation to missing features that have long been available in the Google TV version of Spotify.

But this new Apple TV update should go a long way toward bridging that gap so Spotify users no longer feel they’re getting an inferior TV experience for their chosen music platform.

Recently, Spotify secured a deal to stream some of its video podcasts exclusively through Netflix. The Apple TV app update is another major step toward buoying Spotify content on your household big-screen.