SpectraVid is a private streaming library for independent music videos, visual albums, and performance films. We believe the three-minute video is one of the most demanding and underappreciated forms in contemporary visual culture. Our members agree.
Access by invitation or referral — reviewed every two weeks.
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We built this because nothing else existed. Directors didn't have a place to share work that wasn't optimised for three-second scroll retention. Collectors didn't have an archive that treated these videos as the art objects they are.
We index by director first, artist second. This is intentional: we want the medium's auteurs to be legible as artists with bodies of work, not service providers for more famous musicians.
We go beyond the standard three-minute video. Visual albums, live films, performance documentation, director's cuts, and extended versions — treated as first-class formats, not bonus content.
Many of our videos are shared with SpectraVid exclusively, or before broader release. Directors and labels trust our members. That trust depends on not being a public platform.
Selected videos include a written commentary from the director. Not a press release — actual notes on the shoot, the edit, what they were trying to do. Often more interesting than the video itself.
We maintain a section of pre-digital videos digitised from VHS, U-Matic, and Betacam tape. Some of these exist nowhere else online. This archive is a core part of what we do.
Monthly text-based Q&As with a director from the archive. Members submit questions in advance; we edit and publish the responses. The transcripts stay in the library permanently.
"Finally a place that understands that a music video can be the thing, not the marketing material for the thing."
On what makes a visual album different from a music video collection, and why the format is being taken most seriously by artists you've probably never heard of.
View counts change how people watch videos. We removed them from SpectraVid in 2021 and never looked back. Here's what we found.
We've spent three years digitising VHS and U-Matic tapes from the 1990s underground. A dispatch from the archive project.