Music streaming giant Spotify (disclosure, listening to something called ‘Flare of Defiance’ on the service right now, thanks Discover Weekly*) and kid-entertaining giga-giant Roblox have teamed up for a new location in-game known as Spotify Island. It’s designed as a place for fans and artists to mix and mingle, with two-way communication, and for quests, items, and more relating to the bands to be available. So far, two groups have been announced as taking part.
Exaggeratedly described as a “paradise of sound” in the press release, it’s designed to be “a wonderland of sounds, quests, and exclusive merch.” In gameplay terms, it’s a lot of exploring, finding easter eggs, messing around with sounds, and doing quests. There’s a chart system for collecting points through doing activities and various sub-islands dedicated to specific genres or bands.
The first of these is the understandably named K-Park, focusing on K-Pop. Stray Kids, a boy band, and SUNMI, a solo performer who has worked with League of Legends 2020 World Champions DWG KIA, are the first to sign up. Fans will have a “chance to interact” with them “later this spring” when K-Park launches. The sub-islands will be filled with their own quests and attached bits and pieces.
There are no ads on Spotify Island, but there is plenty of in-game merchandise for players to buy. That puts it all somewhere in the nebulous sphere of the metaverse, naturally, and combined with the young nature of Roblox’s audience, well, dangerous ground. Artists get a cut naturally, and it’ll all come down to price, amount of free content, and quality in the end. I’d probably buy an FF14 mount that plays Scar Symmetry’s Artificial Sun Projection, to be fair.
Spotify Island should be live in Roblox now.
*by time of finishing it was a song called No Heaven No Hell, by an instrumental artist called Alex Norre. It was pretty good, I have followed him on the platform.
Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.