Spotify released its first-ever concert film, Billions Club Live with The Weeknd: A Concert Film, directly on its platform.
The film is a major step in the company becoming a video-streaming player that could compete against Netflix and Prime Video for music-driven projects and concert films. Considering its immense reach and engagement, it could already be viewed as a top platform. As of the second quarter of 2024, Spotify has 626 million monthly active users. By comparison, Netflix has 283 million paid subscribers.
After 25 of The Weeknd’s songs crossed a billion streams, the artist and Spotify decided to commemorate the occasion with a one-night exclusive concert free in December for 1,700 of the artist’s top fans on the platform. Abel Makkonen Tesfaye known professionally as The Weeknd, is a Canadian singer-songwriter. Fun Fact: The most-streamed song on Spotify is The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights, with 4,648,165,127 streams… and counting.
The result is the 48-minute Billions Club Live with The Weeknd: A Concert Film, which includes the December show, played in an airplane hangar at Santa Monica airport, and a voiceover of the artist talking about his career.
The film was made available for free in almost every market that Spotify operates in.
Spotify has been building to this moment for the past year - it introduced music videos on its platform and has rolled out a partner program for video podcasts. With longer-form content now being programmed, don’t be surprised if Spotify tests out a new paid tier to access a slate of exclusive scripted and non-scripted video content.