A Canvas is three to eight seconds, vertical, and should not show anyone singing
The looping visual on a Spotify track has a published spec that takes ten minutes to meet and is routinely got wrong.
Canvas is the short looping visual that plays behind a track in the Spotify app. The spec is published and short.
The spec
- Three to eight seconds long.
- 9:16 vertical, between 720 and 1080 pixels tall.
- MP4 or JPG.
The guidance people skip
Spotify advises against footage with talking, singing or rapping, and against rapid cuts or intense flashing graphics. It also notes that edges may be cropped on some phones, so anything important belongs away from the frame edge.
The no-singing note is the one that catches people out: the instinct is to cut eight seconds of the music video's best lip-sync moment, which is exactly what the guidance steers you away from. A texture, a hand, a slow move, a loop that does not obviously start or end is closer to what the format is for.
Practically, a Canvas is the cheapest asset in a release. If you shot a video, the offcuts contain a dozen of them. If you did not, eight seconds of anything you own, shot vertically, will do.
Source
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