Helping charity: Winamp to sell early software skins as NFT

Winamp, the developer of the famous music player Winamp, will hold an auction of "non-homogenized tokens" through OpenSea from May 16 - 22. By selling 20 original software skins from 1997 as NFTs, it hopes to raise money for the Winamp Foundation and pledge to pass it on to a series of charitable projects (starting with the Belgian Nonprofit Music Fund).

(From: Winamp official website)

Many NFT promotional fundraisers have become quite popular in recent years. Artists who want to receive support from the Winamp Fund can submit Winamp-based artwork during April 15, and then 20% of the proceeds from each image will be passed on to a specific artist.

Nineteen of the NFTs will sell 100 copies and the remaining 97 copies will be priced at 0.08 ETH (about $210). In addition, the artists will receive 10% of the royalties from subsequent sales.

In addition, Thierry Ascarez, Winamp's head of business development, revealed to The Verge that buyers will receive a blockchain token.

It is associated with an image of one of Winamp's original skins or derivatives, and the buyer has the right to reproduce and display the image, but not the copyright.

Likewise, the finalist artists will agree to pre-determined terms and conditions and assign all intellectual property rights to their work to Winamp.

As for the Winamp music player itself, it had a great history in the 1990s, but was acquired by AOL in 1999 and then sold to online radio company Radionomy in 2014 after a long decline.

Radionomy (and later majority shareholder AudioValley) transformed it into a mobile music player and announced a high-profile relaunch during 2022.

In the end, the original Winamp app received a long-overdue update thanks to the support of the community.