US-based music commerce app Single has secured an expense from Shopify and launched a token-gated commerce and content feature.
Single was founded in 2016 as a collection of music-specific toolsets for online stores. The company handles merch plus record sales, sales reporting, ticketing, live stream concert hosting, and more.
As of July 2022, Single says it has worked with more than 3, 000 artists and labels, and has reported over 20 million record product sales, delivered more than 5 million digital albums, and facilitated more than 500 live-streamed events with around 1 million tickets sold. Its clients include Live Nation and EMPIRE, among others.
Single’s venture into Web 3. 0
With the release of token-gating content plus commerce for the Single application on Shopify, Single claims that ‘in mere minutes’, a creator can upload any file to the Single Platform to mint it because an NFT on the particular Solana blockchain. The company says they can then push it directly to their Shopify storefront to be purchased by fans alongside their own existing merch.
Following the purchase of an NFT, followers can use their particular NFT as a ‘digital key’ to gain access to exclusive offerings from the creator such as merch, audio or video content, live streams, and much more.
By integrating Internet 3. 0 functionalities into its Shopify app, Solitary claims to be enabling creatives, artists, and musicians along with tools in order to engage with their fans within new ways and to unlock innovative commerce experiences.
Single’s company officials stated that Web 3. 0 is having a good impact on the broader inventor ecosystem, especially in the music space, but the feedback they get most often is that NFTs don’t inherently have value on their own. A better way to think about tokengating is to compare this to a fan club. A fan purchases an NFT through a creator’s Shopify storefront, which gives them access to exclusive offerings plus experiences that only fellow NFT owners have access to.