Musician’s guide to selling NFTs and digital collectibles on Instagram

Instagram is now allowing creators to sell NFTs and digital collectibles to fans and followers, and here’s how to be a part of it.

by Randi Zimmerman from the Symphonic Blog

With the help of blockchain technology, select creators and collectors can now leverage new tools to earn income, and fans can support their favorite creators by purchasing digital collectibles – art, images and videos, music or trading cards – as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Instagram. Here’s the rundown…

IG is beginning to test digital collectibles with a handful of U.S. creators and collectors who will be able to share NFTs on Instagram that they have created or bought.

This feature includes:

Connecting a digital wallet. Once connected, creators and collectors will have the ability to choose which NFTs from their wallet they would like to share on Instagram.
Sharing digital collectibles. Once a creator or collector posts a digital collectible, it will have a shimmer effect and can display public information, such as a description of the NFT. Posts will also be visible on their profile.
Automatic tagging of both the creator and collector. The creator and collector can be automatically attributed in the digital collectible post (subject to their privacy settings).

How does it work?

“We collect and organize public data from open blockchains, such as Ethereum, to provide this feature. From this public blockchain data, we can only identify which collectibles belong to collectors and creators when they connect their third-party wallets to Instagram. Starting at launch, the blockchains that will be supported are Ethereum and Polygon, with Flow and Solana coming soon. The third-party wallets compatible for use will include Rainbow, MetaMask and Trust Wallet, with Coinbase Wallet, Dapper, and Phantom coming soon. There will be no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on Instagram.” states the official announcement from Instagram.

What’s next?

Soon, the platform will be rolling out digital collectibles on Facebook, and allow people to display and share their digital collectibles as AR stickers in Instagram Stories. (Read more about our AR efforts here.) Over the coming months, they’ll will explore additional features to provide further benefits of this technology to creators and collectors.