Over the past few years, Roblox has exploded as a place for players to engage with their favorite artists, sports teams, and brands online. Major artists including David Guetta and Twenty One Pilots have recently held virtual concert experiences on the platform, including fun games for fans to take part in and collectibles for them to earn and buy.
The music metaverse is entering yet another phase as Spotify has now become the first streaming platform to build a permanent space on Roblox with the launch of Spotify Island, which the company describes as “a paradise of sound where fans and artists from all over the world can hang out and explore a wonderland of sounds, quests, and exclusive merch.”
Unlike other virtual music lands like deadmau5’s Oberhasli on Core, Spotify Island is interesting in that it’s not tied to any particular artist or label, but rather is a space dedicated to music and sounds in general.
Players will be able to interact with artists, participate in interactive quests, rack up points to get to the top of the leaderboard — appropriately called “The Charts” — gain access to exclusive content, and create music at virtual beat-maker stations powered by collaborative music production platform Soundtrap. Spotify also promises an array of other musical Easter eggs for fans to discover as they explore.
Of course, the island wouldn’t be complete without Spotify branding. The space itself is designed as a lush island the color of the streamer’s iconic green logo, and collectible tokens throughout the island take the shape of Spotify’s heart shaped “Like” icon, which players can collect in order to exchange for virtual merch.
Spotify is notorious for not providing big payouts for artists, but the company is attempting to work with them on activations for Spotify Island and notes that it will be returning its portion of virtual merch sales back to the artists it partners with.
The main Spotify Island will be a jumping off point for other themed spaces that fans will be able to portal to and visit throughout the year that will be tied to more specific activations and artist experiences. The first of these will be K-Park, a K-pop themed island, which will allow fans to interact with K-pop superstars Stray Kids and SUNMI and will be launching later this spring.