How to make a Spotify Canvas for your song

A Canvas is the short video loop that plays instead of your cover art when a listener opens the Now Playing view of your song in the Spotify mobile app. It plays on phones only (iOS 12 or later, Android 6.0 or later), and when a listener shares the track to Instagram Stories, the Canvas loops behind the Story with a Play on Spotify link. Spotify counts a Canvas view each time someone opens Now Playing and sees it, at most once per stream, and shows those views in Spotify for Artists.

Spotify's Canvas guidelines list four specs. Your Canvas needs to be:

• 3-8 seconds long
• Vertical, in a 9:16 ratio
• Between 720px - 1080px tall (Spotify's wording)
• An MP4 or JPG file

The content policy is what gets a Canvas removed. Keep listeners in Spotify: no websites or URLs, no ticket vendors, no asking for follows or likes. Any text must belong to this track and must not distract from the picture, and it cannot promote other songs, social accounts, brands (Spotify's logo included), products, deals or contests. Mark the Canvas explicit if it shows profanity, violence, drugs, sexual content or other sensitive topics.

The guidelines also give the craft rules that shape the loop: choose footage without talking, singing or rapping (8 seconds will not stay in sync with your lyrics), avoid rapid cuts and intense flashing, keep the important part away from the edges because some phones cut them off, and consider leaving out the song and artist name, which Now Playing already shows. Spotify names three kinds of loop: a Continuous Loop that joins seamlessly, a Hard Cut with a clear edit point, and a Rebound that plays forwards, then in reverse.

• From a music video: the richest loop, and the one that matches the video fans already know. Make the music video with the AI music video generator, or open one you already made, then keep 3-8 seconds of it in the editor (step 3).
• From your cover art: the Canvas becomes the artwork in motion, which ties it to the release the way Spotify suggests. Animate it in Single media with the artwork as the start frame (step 4).
• From a waveform: free, in your browser, no account. The MP3 to MP4 converter draws an animated waveform or bars over your cover (step 5).

Open the AI music video generator and add the song with Upload a File, or paste its Suno link with Paste a link. You do not need the whole track for a Canvas: on an uploaded file, drag the green region on its waveform; on a link, choose Excerpt under Song segment. The selection must be at least 10 seconds, so take the 10 to 15 seconds around the moment you want to loop. Ten seconds of AI video is 30 credits on Low, 100 on Pro and 200 on Ultra, against 540 to 3,600 for a 3 minute song.

Then set it up for a Canvas, not for a music video. Pick 9:16. In Choose media type, take AI video (paid plans) or the default, Animated AI images. Leave Enable Singer Lip Sync off, since Spotify advises against singing on a Canvas. Turn off Add sound wave, which is on by default, and in Advanced options > Captions, turn on Disable Captions so no lyrics are burned into the picture. In Visual direction for the whole video, ask for slow camera moves and no text. Then press Generate Video.

In the editor, find the 3 to 8 seconds you want: one or two shots, no face singing, little camera shake. Select the clip, put the playhead at the start of your loop and press Split (or S), do the same at its end, then remove everything outside with Delete or Ripple Delete from the right-click menu. Remove the song's audio clip too, or drag its end back to your loop: the project lasts until its last clip ends, and Spotify plays your track under the Canvas anyway. If lyric captions show, turn on Hide captions in the captions panel.

If your music video is 16:9, switch the project to 9:16 Tiktok in the format menu at the top of the editor (on desktop): Revid resizes the project and refits the media. Then click Export, pick 1080p in Start a new export, and press Export. The file is an MP4 (H.264). There is no export range in the dialog: what you export is the whole timeline, which is why the cut happens on the timeline first.

Open Single media (the media generator), choose the Video tab and Keyframes, and upload your artwork in the Start frame slot (PNG, JPG or WebP). The clip follows the frame of the picture it starts from, so begin with a 9:16 version of the artwork rather than the square cover: the vertical version your designer made for Stories, or the cover placed on a 9:16 background.

Set Aspect ratio to 9:16 and Duration to 5 or 6 seconds (Low and Pro take 1 to 15 seconds, Ultra 4 to 30), and turn the Audio switch off: a Canvas is a picture, and your song is what plays. Then describe slow, continuous motion and ask for the artwork to stay as it is:

Keep the artwork exactly as it is. Slow push-in on the main subject,
soft light drifting across the scene, a little dust in the air.
No text, no logos, no new objects, no cuts, no flashing.

Video is billed by the second: 15 credits per 5 seconds on Low (18 for a 6 second clip), 50 on Pro, 100 on Ultra. The clip lands in Your media under the generator, and its card has a Download media button: no editor and no export are needed for this route.

The MP3 to MP4 converter makes a video exactly as long as the audio you give it, so start from a short excerpt: export 6 to 8 seconds of the song from your DAW or audio editor. Drop it on Drop your song here, choose 9:16 under Format and Waveform or Bars under Visual. The cover art inside the file is picked up on its own; if there is none, use Add an image under Background. Clear the Title and Artist fields, so nothing is written on the picture, then press Convert to MP4 and Download MP4.

It runs on your device: nothing is uploaded, there is no signup and no watermark. The 9:16 file is 1080 x 1920, an MP4 with the excerpt's audio in it.

A Canvas is added per track by the first main artist on the track, a main artist on both the track and the release, or a team member with the Admin or Editor role. No access yet? Claim your artist profile in Spotify for Artists (requests are reviewed by hand and approval can take a few days), or get access at once if your distributor is one of Spotify's preferred providers. You can add a Canvas to any track, including a release that is not out yet.

• On the web: log in to artists.spotify.com, go to Music, select the track and click Add Canvas.
• On a phone: open the Spotify for Artists app, tap Music, select the track and tap Canvas. Spotify suggests the mobile app when a web upload fails.

If you, or a listener, do not see it: open the Spotify mobile app, tap your avatar, then Settings and privacy. In Content and display, turn Canvas on; in Data-saving and offline, set Data Saver to Off. The same Canvas switch turns it off for anyone who prefers the cover art. Canvas also only shows to listeners in the countries Spotify lists (the United States, Canada, the UK, most of Europe, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and Japan among them), and a label with split rights can add it only to the versions it owns.