As first reported by Music Ally, Spotify, one of the music streaming giants, is exploring the NFT collection market with Artists Gate. At present, the Android client in the United States has opened relevant functional tests, and the first content covers NFT previews of artists such as Steve Aoki and The Wombats.
While not immediately responding to TheVerge’s request for comment, at least a Spotify spokesperson said in a statement to Music Ally:
- We are running an experiment to help a small group of artists promotes NFT products through their profile pages.
- Our company regularly pilots various projects to improve the experience for artists and fans.
- Some of these concepts eventually paved the way for broader functional improvements, but others were used only for exploratory learning purposes.
In recent years, more and more companies are trying to hitch a ride on NFTs, but the early craze appears to be slowing or even fading. According to The Wall Street Journal, as of May 3, daily NFT sales have plummeted 92% from 225,000 in September last year to 19,000 recently. At the same time, the number of active NFT wallets is also declining, from 119,000 in November last year to around 14,000 at the end of April this year.
Emma Roth discovered after updating the Spotify client that she was able to navigate smoothly to the artist homepages of Steve Aoki and The Wombats and to see the NFT collection below the album tracklist.
After clicking on the thumbnail, you can also see a larger version of the NFT and a brief description. However, Spotify doesn’t seem to support GIFs in video or GIF format yet, and currently only renders static images. In addition, Spotify provides a “see more” option to redirect to OpenSea, a well-known NFT marketplace.
In fact, after the company released a list of jobs related to blockchain technology and NFTs, rumors about Spotify’s entry into the Web3 field surfaced as early as March, and some netizens also posted screenshots of the official questionnaire.
However, according to Music Ally, during the current integration testing phase, Spotify will temporarily not charge commissions for any NFT transactions that jump through the platform. It is currently unknown when this feature will be rolled out to more artists. Finally, in addition to Spotify, Instagram also started NFT integration testing last week.
