Canadian musician Abel Makkonen Tesfaye aka The Weeknd always grabs headlines for his music and being vocal about various causes, such as his recent scathing commentary on plastic surgery and society. Now the Grammy-award winner plans to auction his music and visual art through the latest trend in the tech and art world, Non-Fungible Tokens or NFT.
If you're wondering what an NFT is, read our breakdown of this new trend. To summarise, NFT is a special kind of technology or digital asset that is not exchangeable, and is unique and one-of-a-kind. If you own a NFT artwork or music, you are the only one that can own it, as opposed to another kind of digital asset like a Bitcoin, which you can exchange over the internet. So an NFT artwork can have complete ownership, just like real world canvas paintings such as Van Goghs or Picassos. Otherwise it is very difficult to have any ownership of digital art because of how easy it is to download and share it. So artists are making full use of this new tech and we are yet to see where it will go and what the full practical applications of it are.
After musician Grimes and artist Beeple made millions through this new tech, The Weeknd is also jumping on the bandwagon. On April 3, an auction will sell an unreleased song by him, and a work of art made in consultation with Strange Loop Studios. These will not be available anywhere else. The auction will be done through the digital marketplace, Nifty Gateway.
The Weeknd said in a statement, “Blockchain is democratizing an industry that has historically been kept shut by the gatekeepers. I’ve always been looking for ways to innovate for fans and shift this archaic music biz and seeing NFT’s allowing creators to be seen and heard more than ever before on their terms is profoundly exciting. I intend to contribute to this movement and can see that very soon it will be weaved into the music industry’s mechanics.”