By James McQuillan

Non Fungible Tokens have, for some time, been picked up as a new avenue for developed/emerging artists to monetise, raise funds for new albums and connect with fans. For artists on Spotify, NFTs are now on the cards as the music app tests them out on their streaming service.

Among those artists testing out this new solution include The Wombats and Steve Aoki, both of which have already gained reputations as early adopters. For the moment, it is only in a testing stage, meaning that only a small number of users will be able to preview NFTs on artists’ pages.

When users see an NFT on an artist’s page (on Android only at the moment), they will be able to tap on them to view and even buy them on external markets.
While the broader community has taken to Twitter to express outrage over this very early-stage test (some failing to read that Spotify isn’t selling NFTs), some even use it to criticise the streaming platforms’ payment of musicians on its platform.

Previously, Spotify had received flak both from artists and its community over its payment structure. But, surely allowing artists another avenue to directly benefit from streaming on the platform is an interesting play. With that said, however, it does show that there is still a good deal of misunderstanding and downright hostility towards a democratising technology.