Winamp sells original 1.0 skin as NFT and creates Winamp Foundation
Winamp, the iconic media player, will be launching its new platform in June 2022.
Winamp’s mission is to empower creators and fans, to give them more control and transparency over their music ownership and usage, while providing the best listening experience online. Winamp believes that helping artists and users take the power back is the only way for musical creativity to thrive and keep on serving humanity.
This spring, Winamp is also opening its Foundation to help musicians across the world create music they love. All the funds collected by the Foundation will be redistributed to charity projects supporting music and musicians.
On May 16th, the Winamp Foundation will put the original and iconic Winamp skin on auction, as a 1/1 NFT edition. The NFT will be on sale on OpenSea until May 22nd.
“Winamp was the go-to music player everybody was using at the beginning of the history of digital music and was instrumental to help the MP3 become mainstream. The original design of the player is now iconic. Anyone who has been listening to music on its computer in the 90’s and early 2000 remembers the original Winamp skin, it has been used by hundreds of millions of users around the globe.” says Alexandre Saboundjian – Winamp’s CEO.
Starting May 23rd, Winamp will also sell 20 NFT artworks, made by 20 digital artists and derived from the Winamp original skin (“derivatives”).
This unique collection will be made of 1997 derivatives in total (19*100 and 1*97). Submissions are open until April 15th and Selected artists will be announced on May 18th.
“Winamp is here to support the artist community which is driving the development of the new Winamp product.” adds Saboundjian “Supporting music and musicians is also why the work of the Winamp Foundation is very important.”
All the revenue generated by the sale of the NFTs (original and derivatives) will be collected by the Winamp Foundation which will in turn distribute the money to different music charity projects. The first one that has been selected is MusicFund which is a non-profit-association that collects musical instruments, repairs them and gives them a second life by donating them to music schools and socio-artistic projects in conflict zones and developing countries, as well as in Europe.