Sydney, 23rd February 2022 Serenade, the eco-friendly platform for music NFTs, has partnered with The Kooks to release the band’s debut NFT. Created to mark the 15th anniversary of the British indie-pop trailblazers’ acclaimed debut album Inside In / Inside Out, the NFT will be priced at an affordable £30 and is released at 9am GMT on Thursday February 24 from serenade.co
Recorded in Dublin on January 27th, on the opening night of their 15th-anniversary tour, the live version of the band’s hit single ‘Ooh La’ will be minted in just 20 unique editions.
Speaking about the release Luke Pritchard of The Kooks said, “I’m really excited about NFTs and working with Serenade. We wanna take a ride with you guys, our fans, so we have minted some NFTs to celebrate 15 years of our first album, ‘Inside In / Inside Out’. Serenade are an amazing company who have found a way of doing this in a really environmentally safe and friendly way.”
NFT – or Non-Fungible Token – is proof that a digital item is authentic and unique. Like owning a rare vinyl record or a piece of art in a digital world a fan will be its only owner until they want to sell it or trade it or keep it and collect some more.
Purchasing is as simple as any other form of online shopping with fans able to buy the NFTs using debit or credit card. There’s no need to open a crypto wallet or have any prior understanding of cryptocurrency or the blockchain. Serenade will handle the blockchain operations behind the scenes so fans don’t have to worry about the technicalities.
Serenade’s NFTs use 1/10th of the energy required to post a tweet, and 1/44,000th of a normal NFT, meaning they have minimal environmental impact. This is because they use the authentication method called ‘Proof of Stake’, rather than the standard Ethereum ‘Proof of Work’ method.
The Kooks recently announced that their sixth studio album, ‘10 TRACKS TO ECHO IN THE DARK’ will be released on July 22nd via Lonely Cat / AWAL Recordings and is a fresh sounding, electronic-tinged evolution of their iconic sound. There’s also a fresh approach to releasing the album; the record will be released in three parts, the first two parts consisting of 3-track EP releases and the final part adding a further four tracks to the full album release. The first EP, ‘CONNECTION – ECHO IN THE DARK PART 1’ is out now. Listen to ‘Connection’, ‘Jesse James’ and ‘Modern Days’ here. And watch the video for ‘Connection’ here.
-ENDS-
About The Kooks
The Kooks are British indie-pop trailblazers who first hit the music scene in 2006 with the release of their iconic debut album ‘Inside In / Inside Out’. This year will see the band release their sixth studio album ‘10 TRACKS TO ECHO IN THE DARK’ on July 22nd via Lonely Cat / AWAL Recordings. The band are frontman Luke Pritchard, Hugh Harris (lead guitar/synthesiser/bass) and Alexis Nunez (drums).
About Serenade
Founded by Australian tech entrepreneur and music fan Max Shand, Serenade’s mission is to create dynamic new revenue streams for artists by forging closer relationships with their superfans. This is accomplished via music-related digital collectibles including limited edition artworks, new, rare or re-worked recordings, real life experiences and merchandise, and unique documentary material. Digital collectibles are purchased by fans as NFTs and can be collected and resold, with artists receiving an ongoing share of the revenues every time they change hands.
Purchases are made with a credit or debit card via Serenade’s innovative check out facility that has been designed to function like a standard e-commerce cart, where the creation of a digital wallet and the transfer of traditional payments into cryptocurrency is handled directly by the platform.
Serenade’s Environmental Credentials Explained
A Serenade NFT emits just 1/10th of the carbon of a tweet, which comes to 1/44,000th of the footprint of a normal NFT. We do this through an energy efficient NFT authentication method called ‘Proof of Stake,’ a counterpoint to the standard Ethereum ‘Proof of Work’ method.
This marked improvement is a result of the Serenade platform being built on top of a layer 2 blockchain called Matic. Matic has a trusted relationship with Ethereum, which means it doesn’t have to go through the exhaustive process of proving every single NFT transaction to the blockchain, but rather achieves this via collective proofs.
Not only does this lead to far better ecological outcomes, but it lowers the cost of creating NFTs so artists can be free to produce more work for their fanbases without bearing any gas fees.
