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Winamp will sell a non-fungible token (NFT) linked to its media player’s original 1997 graphical skin, becoming the latest company to blend nostalgia and crypto. Winamp will put the NFT up for auction through OpenSea between May 16th and May 22nd, followed by a separate sale of 1997 total NFTs based on 20 artworks derived from the original skin. The Winamp Foundation will receive the proceeds and promise to donate them to charities, including the Belgian Music Fund.
The NFT sale seems to be both a publicity stunt and a fundraising campaign. Winamp is sourcing the derivative art NFTs by asking artists to submit Winamp-based works between now and April 15th, then giving selected artists 20 percent of the proceeds from each sale of their image as an NFT. Nineteen of the pieces will sell in editions of 100 copies, and the remaining one will have 97; they’ll all sell for 0. 08 Ethereum — around $210 at current exchange rates. The artists will get 10 percent of any royalties on later sales, where the seller will set their own price.
Winamp’s chief of business development Thierry Acarez told The verge buyers that they will receive a blockchain token linked with an image of the original skin or one of its derivatives. This is a common setup to support NFTs. The buyer will be allowed to copy, reproduce, display and display the image but not the copyright. A page describing the terms and conditions . will also allow selected artists to agree to transfer any intellectual property related to their work to Winamp.
Winamp isn’t precisely the service you might remember from the ’90s. The MP3-playing software was acquired by AOL in 1999, then sold to online radio company Radionomy in 2014 after a long decline and shutdown. Radionomy (and later its majority stakeholder AudioValley) revamped it as a mobile audio app, then announced a broader relaunch for this year. There’s also a long-running community update project for the original app.
However, there’s a stronger connection between Winamp’s current form and its original one than some crypto projects. Venerable peer-to-peer file-sharing service LimeWire recently “relaunched” as an NFT marketplace, but it shares effectively no connection to its previous iteration; a new company apparently just bought the domain name and revived an expired trademark. It’s a little closer to a resurrected RadioShack’s plans to launch a cryptocurrency marketplace, except that this NFT sale is a small part of its relaunch as a music service, not a broader move into crypto — at least so far.
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