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And Finally Artist News Digital
Kings Of Leon to launch NFT into space
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 10 September 2021
One of the first bands to get in on the whole NFT racket, Kings Of Leon are back with another digital collectable. However, given that they are returning to a much more crowded marketplace for all tokens of the non-fungible variety, they need to up their game in order to stand out. What’s the classic way to do that when you’ve otherwise run out of ideas? Just ask Hollywood: Do the same thing, but in SPACE.
The band are set to auction off a pointless certificate of ownership for a previously unreleased live performance of their song ‘Time In Disguise’. But before that happens, the video will be played by SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission while orbiting around the Earth. Yes! This is your opportunity to pretend to own a piece of digital content that someone who wasn’t you once watched in space!
What makes it a little harder to mock all this nonsense, though, is that it’s all being done for charity. For sick children, no less. So at least something positive will come of this otherwise entirely pointless venture. It is part of a number of fundraising activities by Inspiration4 in aid of the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
One of the four people who will fly into space in the SpaceX Resilience spacecraft next week, medical officer Hayley Arceneaux, is a former patient of St Jude and now works at the hospital. The Kings Of Leon NFT forms part of a drive to raise $200 million to go towards the treatment of children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
“We have a long standing relationship with St Jude and they approached us after seeing what we did earlier this year releasing our album as an NFT”, Kings Of Leon’s Caleb Followill tells Billboard. “We are big supporters of their mission, and always happy to help support their mission, but this is the first time our music is part of the story and that makes it even more special for us. The fact that we’re also all making history together in the process is just a wild bonus”.
“It is another positive example of how the old music industry is changing”, he goes on. “New ideas, like NFTs, and new ways to engage and connect and give back, are crucial to the future of music and the role we play in making things better. We’ve been around a while, we are on album eight, but things like this make us feel like we are just getting started”.
Yeah, whatever, NFTs are fucking stupid. But if it gets people to part with a load of money for sick children, maybe this one is worth it. You can bid on KoL’s space NFT here (assuming you have more than $50,000 burning a hole in your pocket) or you can just watch a video of the band talking about it here.
