LONDON, Dec 9 — Beatles fans thought they had heard it all from John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. But that was before non-fungible tokens came into the picture. Exclusive interviews with the Fab Four in the form of NFTs will soon be offered for auction on the Voices of Classic Rock platform.
The Voices of Classic Rock (VOCR) archive houses 650 historic interviews and radio shows featuring “virtually every major rock music icon during the period of 1964 to 2008.” Among them are the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles. The platform decided to mint four NFTs of historic interviews, not heard in years, with John Lennon and his bandmates, each comprising an illustration and a WAV file of the recording.
The John Lennon interview is called A Day in the Life — in reference to the famous song he co-wrote with Paul McCartney — and touches on his life from the Fab Four to the joys of fatherhood. Paul McCartney talks about his relationship with recording and the release of new musical projects in Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, while George Harrison talks about the Abbey Road album in the NFT of the same name. Ringo Starr’s interview is about the disappearance of a gold medallion belonging to the Beatles’ drummer during a trip to New York.
These four NFTs will be auctioned on Friday, December 10 on the Voices of Classic Rock platform. Fans of Beatlemania will need to be ready to spend at least 1.25 Ether, equivalent to US$5,357 (RM22,630) at the time of writing. Bidding will also take place in Ethereum.
NFTs are “here to stay” in the music business
However, bids could soon rise given the historical significance of the NFTs for sale. “These interviews have not been heard in decades. The auction represents the first time ever that NFTs of rock music icon interviews are being offered to the general public,” says Voices of Classic Rock on its website.
According to Jonathan Firstenberg, managing director of the VOCR archive, more Fab Four interviews in the form of NFTs may be auctioned in the future. “The extensive variety of Beatles interviews that we have in our collection are, perhaps, our most comprehensive and valuable assets; that is why we wanted to launch with John, Paul, George and Ringo, the ultimate Classic Rock Stars,” he said in a statement.
As for NFTs, Jonathan Firstenberg is convinced that these digital assets will occupy a prominent place in the music industry. “We are confident that NFTs, as a new medium, are here to stay and we are very interested to see how this new medium will evolve. In particular, we are going to be studying how the market determines what rights to a property need to be embedded within a NFT itself for it to have real intrinsic value.” — ETX STudio
