Spotify Canvas Size & Specs (2026): 9:16, 3-8 Seconds

What is a Spotify Canvas?

When a listener plays your track on Spotify’s mobile app, the now-playing screen normally shows your cover art. A Canvas replaces that with a short looping clip. It plays silently on a loop the whole time the song is running, and stops when the listener pauses or moves to something else.

It’s a mobile-only feature. Desktop and Spotify Web Player don’t show Canvas. Your cover art still appears everywhere the Canvas doesn’t, so Canvas adds a layer on top of the existing visual identity of the track and leaves your cover art in place. If that cover isn’t finalized yet, get the album cover dimensions and specs right first, since the Canvas sits on top of it.

Canvas is set per track. A new album with ten tracks means ten separate Canvas slots. You don’t have to fill all of them, and there’s no penalty for leaving some blank. This is part of the Spotify for Artists profile toolkit alongside Artist Pick, your bio, and the other profile modules.

What Canvas specs does Spotify require?

Spotify is specific about this and the requirements haven’t changed much since Canvas launched. Get any of these wrong and the upload will fail or look bad in playback.

• Length: 3 to 8 seconds. Shorter than 3 seconds won’t be accepted. Longer than 8 seconds won’t be accepted. The loop repeats from the beginning each time, so if your clip has a hard cut at the end, that cut shows on every loop.
• Aspect ratio: 9:16, vertical. This is the same ratio as a phone screen in portrait mode, Instagram Stories, and TikTok. If you’re already making vertical content for social, the dimensions are the same.
• Resolution: 720x1280 pixels is the safe export size for a 9:16 Canvas. Spotify’s current upload-error guidance accepts 720 to 1080 px tall, so there is no reason to export above 1080 px tall.
• File type: MP4 for video, JPG for a still image that loops. Most Canvas uploads are MP4.
• Audio: none. Canvas is a silent visual. Any clip with an audio track will be rejected. If you’re exporting from a video editor, strip the audio before you upload.

Does Canvas help your numbers?

Spotify reports that tracks with a Canvas see higher saves, more shares, and more listener adds compared to tracks without one. They’ve published this from their own data. The mechanism is plausible: a moving visual holds a listener’s attention on the now-playing screen, and a listener who stays focused on the app is more likely to save or share the song than one who locks their phone and lets it play passively.

What I’d push back on is treating those numbers as a guarantee for your track specifically. Spotify is reporting aggregate data from their platform, and a Canvas that looks generic, low-quality, or off-brand could cancel out the benefit. The lift from Canvas is real enough that it’s worth doing. The lift from a great Canvas is more than from a bad one.

How do I set a Canvas in Spotify for Artists?

You need at least Editor access in S4A to upload a Canvas. If you haven’t claimed your profile yet, that’s the starting point: see how to claim your Spotify for Artists profile.

Once you’re in: go to the Music section of your S4A dashboard, find the track you want to add a Canvas to, and look for the Canvas option in the track settings. Upload your clip (meeting all five spec requirements), preview it, and save. The Canvas goes live on the track usually within a few minutes. You can replace or remove it at any time from the same place.

A Canvas on a track you’re about to pitch to editorial is worth having in place before the pitch goes in. It signals you’ve prepared the full release. Whether it moves the needle with editors specifically, Spotify doesn’t say. But it’s done in ten minutes and there’s no downside.

Why isn't my Canvas showing in Spotify?

First separate an upload problem from a playback problem. If the Canvas is attached in Spotify for Artists but you cannot see it while listening, check the Spotify mobile app. Canvas does not play in the desktop app or web player. Spotify currently requires iOS 12 or later or Android 6.0 or later. In the mobile app, turn Data Saver off under Data-saving and offline, then turn Canvas on under Content and display.

If the upload control itself is missing, check access and recording rights. Spotify allows the first main artist on the track, or an artist listed as a main artist on both the track and release, to add Canvas with Admin or Editor access. Labels with split rights can add Canvas only to versions they own, so confirm that you are looking at the correct version before opening a support case.

What makes a good Canvas?

The constraint of 3 to 8 seconds is the whole creative challenge. It has to loop without a jarring cut, it has to read as intentional at a glance, and it has to look good on a phone screen with the Spotify UI layered on top.

A few approaches that work. A slow zoom on a still image (a photo, a piece of artwork, something related to the release) cut to loop cleanly. A short clip from a music video cut to loop cleanly. Abstract motion graphics or an animated version of the cover art. Anything where a cold viewer understands in two seconds what they’re looking at and it feels like it belongs with the song.

Things that tend to work less well: random footage with no connection to the music, text-heavy clips that are unreadable at phone size, or anything that requires more than a few seconds of context to make sense. The viewer didn’t ask for this. It has to earn their attention fast.

How do Canvas, retired Clips, countdown videos, and full-length video differ?

These are separate Spotify surfaces, not interchangeable upload sizes. Canvas remains the silent 3-to-8-second Now Playing loop attached to a track. Spotify stopped accepting new Clips uploads on June 17, 2026, although existing Clips remain live and are moving into the Video tab. Countdown Page Clips are now called countdown videos and remain tied to eligible Countdown Pages. Full-length video upload is a separate, gradually rolling-out feature for eligible artists.

Where do the Canvas rules come from?

Use Spotify's artist help pages as the source of record, then check your export against the uploader before release week. The specs page covers the hard file requirements. The guidelines and policy pages cover the softer problems: flashing cuts, cramped phone framing, distracting text, unrelated promo, or a clip that feels disconnected from the track.