The original Winamp skin is selling as an NFT

Winamp

Winamp will sell a non-fungible token 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 donate the proceeds to charity.

The NFT sale appears to be a combination of publicity and raising money. Winamp will give 20 percent of the proceeds from each sale of their image as an NFT to selected artists if they submit Winamp-based works between now and April 15th. Nineteen of the pieces will sell in editions of 100 copies, and the remaining 97 will sell for 0.08 ether, around $210 at current exchange rates. 10 percent of royalties will be given to the artists when the seller sets their own price.

The head of business development at Winamp says that buyers will get a token linked to an image of either the original skin or one of its derivatives, which is a common setup for NFTs. The buyers will have the right to reproduce and display the image, but they won't own the copyright. All intellectual property of selected artists will be transferred to Winamp according to a page of terms and conditions.

Winamp isn't exactly the service you remember from the 90s. The online radio company Radionomy sold the software after it was acquired by AOL in 1999. Radionomy changed it's name to a mobile audio app, then announced a broader relaunch for this year. The original app has a long-running community update project.

There is a stronger connection between Winamp's current form and its original one. A new company just bought the domain name and revived an expired trademark for LimeWire, a venerable peer-to-peer file-sharing service that just launched as an NFT marketplace. RadioShack's plans to launch acryptocurrencies marketplace are close to being realized, except that this NFT sale is a small part of its relaunch as a music service.