Spotify Canvas requirements, and why most loops have a visible seam
In short
A Spotify Canvas is a silent, vertical, looping video between 3 and 8 seconds long, in 9:16 aspect ratio. Deliver it at 1080x1920 so it holds up on large phones. It must have no audio, and it repeats indefinitely while the track plays, so the last frame sits directly against the first. Almost every amateur Canvas fails at that join: the shot ends somewhere different from where it started and the repeat reads as a restart. The fixes are to use one continuous camera move with no cuts, choose motion that returns to its origin, and cross-fade the tail back into the head over a second or two.
Canvas is the short vertical video that plays behind a track in the Spotify mobile app. The format itself is simple enough to state in one line, and most articles about it stop there. The interesting problem is not the spec, it is the loop.
The spec
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Aspect ratio | 9:16, vertical |
| Delivery resolution | 1080x1920 |
| Duration | 3 to 8 seconds |
| Audio | None. Any audio track is discarded |
| Playback | Repeats continuously for the length of the track |
| Content | No explicit imagery, no trademarks you do not own, no URLs, handles or calls to action in frame |
Spotify for Artists is the authority on the content rules and on anything about upload and eligibility, and those do change. Treat the table as the shape of the format rather than as a substitute for checking before a release.
The two constraints that actually shape the work are the ones people skip past: it is silent, and it never stops.
Silent changes what you can do
You cannot hit a beat. Not because the tooling will not let you, but because it would not mean anything: a Canvas is not synchronised to playback position, so a listener who starts the track from a playlist sees the loop at an arbitrary offset. Any motion timed to a musical moment will land on a different moment for every listener.
So the visual has to work at any phase. That rules out the whole vocabulary of the beat-synced lyric video, which is a different format solving a different problem. A Canvas wants continuous motion, not punctuated motion.
Looping is the entire craft problem
A Canvas repeats with no gap and no fade to black. On a four-minute track, a 4-second loop plays about sixty times. The listener is not watching it closely, but they are watching it in peripheral vision for four minutes, and the join is the thing they will notice.
Three rules cover most of it.
One continuous shot, no cuts. A cut inside a 5-second loop reads as an edit, and once there is one edit in there the loop point becomes just another edit, which is worse. Keep it to a single move.
Motion that returns to where it started. A slow orbit, a rotation, a drift that comes back, smoke or water or light that has no fixed position to return to. What fails is directional motion: a push-in that ends closer than it began has nowhere to go but a hard cut back out.
Cross-fade the tail into the head. Even a well-chosen shot rarely ends exactly where it started. Overlapping the final second or two back over the opening frames hides the residual difference. We cap that overlap at two seconds, which is generous on a 3-second loop and about right on an 8-second one. Past that you are fading more than you are showing.
What to actually put in it
The honest answer is that a Canvas is atmosphere, not information. It sits behind the now-playing screen while someone listens. It is not a place to explain anything, and text in it competes with the track title and artist name that Spotify draws over the top.
What works: a single subject with slow ambient motion. Texture, light, water, fabric, smoke. A crop of the cover art with life in it. The artist, in one continuous move, doing very little.
What does not: anything with a beginning and an end, dense text, rapid cuts, or a visual that only makes sense the first time you see it.
Making one without shooting one
If you have the footage, any editor that can export 9:16 at 1080x1920 with the audio stripped will do the job. The work is in the choosing and the loop point, not the export.
If you do not, the two routes are a library clip trimmed to a loop, or a generated shot. Both are in Revori: pick a start point in a clip, set a loop length between 3 and 8 seconds, and the crossfade is applied for you, or generate a one-shot vertical loop from a prompt. A Canvas render costs 25 credits. The song analysis you already paid for on a lyric video is reused, so a Canvas from a track you have already uploaded costs nothing beyond the render.
The short version
Vertical, 1080x1920, 3 to 8 seconds, silent, looping. After that, the join is where the remaining effort should go, because it is the part a listener sees sixty times in one song.
Questions people ask about this
- What are the Spotify Canvas requirements?
- A Canvas is a vertical 9:16 video with no audio, between 3 and 8 seconds long, that loops continuously while the track plays. Deliver it at 1080x1920. Spotify also applies content rules: no explicit imagery, no third-party trademarks or logos you do not own, and no calls to action, URLs or social handles burned into the frame. Spotify for Artists is the authority on the current rules and they do change, so check there before a release.
- What size and dimensions should a Spotify Canvas be?
- Vertical 9:16. 1080x1920 is the practical delivery size: it is a standard phone resolution, it survives re-encoding, and it looks correct on large displays where lower-resolution uploads go soft. Anything wider than 9:16 gets cropped, and cropping a horizontal shot to vertical almost always cuts the subject.
- How long should a Spotify Canvas be?
- Between 3 and 8 seconds, and shorter is usually better. A Canvas repeats for the entire length of the track, so a listener on a four-minute song sees a 4-second loop around sixty times. A short loop with one clear idea survives that repetition. A longer one with narrative in it becomes obvious and then irritating.
- Can a Spotify Canvas have sound?
- No. Canvas is silent by design, because the track is the audio. Any audio track in the file is discarded. This also means the visual cannot rely on hitting a beat, since a listener can start the song at any point and the loop is not synchronised to playback position.
- Why does my Spotify Canvas look like it restarts instead of looping?
- Because the last frame does not match the first. A loop repeats with no gap, so any difference in position, brightness or subject placement between the tail and the head reads as a jump. Fix it by shooting or choosing one continuous move that returns to where it began, avoiding cuts entirely, and cross-fading the final second or two back into the opening frames.