Spotify Trials “Token-Enabled Playlists” for NFT Holders

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Music is back in Web3 news. Spotify, the world’s dominant streaming platform, is testing “token enabled playlists” that let NFT holders connect their crypto wallets to listen to curated music.

Currently, holders of popular NFT collections like Moonbirds, Fluf, Overlord, and KINGSHIP can access the new services. The testing period will last three months, and community-curated playlists will be continually refreshed.

The news was released on Wednesday, February 22, by Web3 gaming and media company Overlord. It wrote that holders of its Creepz NFTs could link their Web3 wallet to hear a special Spotify podcast curated by the Overlord community called “Invasion.”

KINGSHIP, the NFT supergroup from Universal Music Studio, also dropped a token-gated Spotify playlist for NFT holders that includes tracks from Snoop Dogg, Missy Elliot, Queen, and Led Zeppelin. It can only be accessed by KINGSHIP Key Card NFT holders.

Apoorv Lathey, the lead developer of the pilot, took to social media to show users via screenshots how they can access the exclusive playlists on Spotify. Holders of the specific collections must connect a crypto wallet, like Trust Wallet, Rainbow, MetaMask, Ledger Live or Zerion wallets to hear the playlists.

Spotify confirmed the announcement via Twitter and said they will be conducting tests throughout the pilot to enhance user experience. However, the platform declined to comment on its future plans.

Spotify is the largest music and podcast streaming platform in the world, with nearly 490 million users. While it’s been wading slowly into Web3 waters for some time now — in May 2022, it endorsed NFTs on the profiles of famous artists like the Wombats and Steve Aoki —the idea of token-gated playlists could create a new experiences for fans and new revenue streams for artists.

Currently, the Spotify pilot program is only available to Android users in the U.K., U.S., Australia, Germany, and New Zealand.

Web3 Music Is Heating Up

Spotify’s new token-gated playlist is a novel idea in the music industry, and exciting news for music and Web3 fans — especially holders of the first lucky collections. But Spotify isn’t the first music-focused platform to open up to Web3 technologies.

At Rarity Sniper, we’ve written dozens of articles in recent months about music in Web3. Here are some of the top headlines:

Web3 can reshape the music industry in several ways, offering artists the chance to connect with fans through metaverse concerts, individual NFT music tracks, and NFTs linked to token-gated experiences like live concerts, or in the case of Spotify, curated playlists.

For now, the new feature from Spotify is being rolled out slowly to only the holders of a few top NFT collections. But if the pilot is successful, we wouldn’t be surprised if the Web2 streaming giant expands the use of token-enabled playlists to more users.