A never-before-heard song recorded by whitney Houston when she was just 17 is being auctioned off as part of a non fungible token (NFT) collection, which is being released on the Quincy Jones-backed NFT platform OneOf.
It’s the latest in the booming digital trend, which is reshaping the economics of the music industry.
Bidding on the song begins on December 1 through OneOf, during Art Basel in Miami. The winner of the auction will be the only person to have access to the recording along with a one-of-a-kind video NFT.
The 27-time Grammy award winning record producer for legendary artists from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson met Houston when she was 16 years old — after being introduced by Motown songwriters Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson.
Just prior to that, Jones worked with the duo on the film “The Wiz,” the 1978 project where he first worked with Michael Jackson. A year later, Houston recorded the unreleased song at the tender age of 17.
The drop includes more than just the new recording, and will be tiered. The collection includes digital artwork and video NFTs using rarely-seen archival photos from Houston’s early life and career.
OneOf is offering a pre-sale limited edition of 300 tokens Wednesday, November 17 as part of the Whitney collection for $17 — symbolizing Houston’s age at the time of the recording. Artist Diana Sinclair who designed the NFTs and shares Houston’s values, is also 17 years old.
OneOf is the brainchild of Fell, blockchain technology executive Lin Dai, and Joshua James, who created a company called Zig Media often referred to as the “Instagram of news” for distilling information into video and photos.
The trio wanted to make buying NFTs of various artists eco friendly, easy and accessible to everyone. Big name artists to emerging artists will be spotlighted on the platform.
Built on the Tezos (XTZ-USD) blockchain, minting a NFT on OneOf’s platform uses two million times less energy than other proof-of-work networks.
That means minting an NFT on OneOf takes about the same amount of electricity as one Twitter post, whereas minting an NFT on a “proof-of-work” platform uses the amount of electricity of the average U.S. household over a period of 5.3 days.
