Mastercard Drops Free Music Pass NFTsThe NFTs unlock access to exclusive content and experiences from the Mastercard Artist Accelerator program, and is free to redeem until the end of April.

Amidst the ongoing annual NFT NYC conference 2023, the credit card giant Mastercard announced the drop of free music pass non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to unlock its recently established artist accelerator program. The drop is taking place on Polygon, an Ethereum scaling network. The NFTs can be accessed free through the end of April.

In a press release, Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer and president of health-care business, Mastercard, stated, "Providing Web3 education is a key motivator for the company's new NFTs and accelerator program. As a company, we hope to help people and partners around the world better understand and trust how blockchain and digital assets are used, and how our technology can support the ecosystem."

"We also believe that Web3 can be a powerful tool in connecting people and building communities around shared universal passions."

In January this year, the company launched a web3 enabled Music Artist Accelerator program. The latter selects five curated artists to connect to mentors and dynamic fanbases, and also empowers artists in their transition from web2 to web3.

What is interesting to note is that Mastercard has previously made moves in supporting musicians by sponsoring the Grammy Awards, Latin Grammy Awards and Brit Awards, but this is its first move that combines music and NFTs.

However, it is not first foray into NFTs overall. In June 2022 it began allowing cardholders to purchase NFTs with fiat through a partnership with payments infrastructure company MoonPay.