“Isn’t… the point of GIFs not to have sound?” – Brett Venter, Stuff editor.
The internet’s unofficial main distributor of GIFs, Giphy, has announced that it is teaming up with Spotify to bring some sound into the mix. The pair plans to “give GIFs a soundtrack,” according to Engadget, and we only have one question: Why?
Spotify’s pushing buttons
According to the report, Giphy users will be able to search for an artist (musician, we reckon) on its platform and click on a ‘listen on Spotify’ button which will redirect to their page. Of course, this is a far way from ‘giving GIFs sound’, and is more just an update to the Giphy webpage. We’re buying into the marketing talk to justify how dumb it is, however.
“A handful of artists are already using the Spotify-Giphy tie-in, including Doja Cat, The Weeknd and Nicki Minaj. You’ll find it both on the web and in Giphy’s mobile app,” Engadget details.
More likely, this is a campaign to help promote artists that the listener may not know very well. If you find an interesting GIF through one of Giphy’s channels related to music, it should, technically, link back to that artist’s music. So while this is a natural evolution of backlinking on the internet, Giphy and Spotify are putting a weird spin on it.