Web3 music is gaining momentum with the latest announcement from Spotify. The world's largest music and podcast streaming platform has recently started a three-month testing period of the new feature dubbed ‘token-enabled playlists’. It allows selected NFT holders to connect their crypto wallets to listen to curated music. During the trial period only a few blue-chip NFT communities, including Fluf, Moonbirds, Kingship, and Overlord will have access to the feature. Thus, according to Spotify, it will regularly update the tracklists while NFT holders will be able to test the feature by following a unique link.
The first community to announce the partnership with Spotify on a new trial was the web3 gaming and media company, Overlord. In the extensive Twitter feed of February 22nd, the project stated that only holders of its lizard-themed Creepz NFTs could link their web3 wallets to Spotify to hear a specific podcast curated by the Overlord community called Invasion.
The super popular web3 music band KINGSHIP announced the partnership with Spotify the same day and even dropped a token-gated playlist, available exclusively for the Key Card NFT holders. The tracks available include compositions by Snoop Dogg, Missy Elliot, Queen, and Led Zeppelin.
The Spotify pilot's lead developer Apoorv Lathey posted a series of screenshots on Twitter, describing the detailed process for users to access the token-gated playlists on Spotify. Thus, according to the dev, the NFT holders of stated collections need to connect their Trust Wallet, Rainbow, MetaMask, Ledger Live, or Zerion wallets with their blue-chip tokens to listen to the tracklist. The feature is currently available exclusively for Android users. Moreover, the pilot also has territorial limitations, being accessible only to testers from the UK, the US, Australia, Germany, and New Zealand.
Although the streaming platform confirmed the trial of the token-enabled playlists, it is keeping its plans for the future secret.
Spotify's idea of token-gated playlists promotes a bunch of never-before-seen experiences for music fans as well as a new source of capitalization for artists. If the pilot shows up to be a success, we are likely to expect Spotify to make the feature accessible to more users worldwide. Let's wait and see!
