You Can Now Take a Photography Course on Spotify

Spotify is best-known for being the world’s most popular music streaming service but it is adding video learning courses to its app — including photography courses.

In recent times, Spotify has expanded into podcasts and audiobooks, and its new tutorial service will make video-based lessons from Skillshare, BBC Maestro, Thinkific, and PlayVirtuoso available for customers to purchase.

For now, the online courses are only available to customers in the U.K. with no immediate plans to expand the experiment. Courses for “Outdoor Photography” and “Photo Storytelling” are available to British patrons for the price of $63 (£47.90).

Other courses include “Introduction to Pet Photography” hosted by Australian Belinda Richards and “iPhone Photography” which teaches students how to create conceptual photographs on an iPhone, it is taught by Munich-based iPhone shooter Amelie Satzger.

“One of the most interesting things and trends that we started noticing was more and more people were starting to come to Spotify with some intent of learning,” product director Mohit Jitani tells The Verge. “And we thought, how can we take this core insight and build something on top of it?”

Spotify says that around half of its Premium subscribers have engaged with educational podcasts or self-help podcasts, per a press release.

The courses offered by Spotify fall into four categories: make music, get creative, learn business, and healthy living. Spotify says it hopes to directly target potential customers based on their existing listening habits.

“It becomes much, much easier for us to find the right people for this course and just provide a much more efficient kind of distribution,” Jitani adds.

Existing Spotify subscribers will be able to watch at least two video lessons per course for free, but will have to pay money if they want to complete the full course. This freemium model is similar to the audiobooks Spotify rolled out toward the end of last year.

Users cannot buy a course in-app because of Spotify’s refusal to pay Apple and Google’s transaction fees. Users must request a purchase link via email or the courses are available via a dedicated URL.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.