The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is all geared up to return this April after a two-year break. In this year’s edition, however, Coachella is selling lifetime festival passes for the first time. To avail the same, people need to first buy an NFT.
This fest is arguably one of the largest, most famous, and most profitable music events. It features artists from diverse music genres—including rock, pop, indie, electronic dance music, and hip hop—and art installations and sculptures. Serval stages continuously host live music in tandem.
Saying it out loud
The music festival today launched an NFT marketplace built by FTX US, with three collections of NFTs going on sale on February 4th. Their official notice highlighted,
Coachella Collectibles are a first of its kind opportunity to own lifetime festival passes, unlock unique on-site experiences, physical items, and digital collectibles.
With respect to its partnership, it added,
We have partnered with FTX US to build an environmentally friendly marketplace on Solana.
Solana is a comparatively eco-friendly blockchain with lower fees than Ethereum. FTX, for its part, introduced a Solana-based NFT marketplace last October.
The company would auction the first set – Coachella Keys Collection, a group of 10 NFTs that’ll act like lifetime tickets to the festival. Owners of the token would get passes to Coachella every year, plus “access to Coachella-produced virtual experiences forever.” The NFT purchases also include special perks at the 2022 festival like front row access and a celebrity chef dinner.
Sam Schoonover, Coachella’s Innovation Lead, said in a statement,
“Only blockchain technology can give us the unique ability to offer tradeable lifetime passes to Coachella for the first time ever.”
The other Desert Reflections Collection consists of 1,000 tokens priced at $180 each, which buyers can redeem for a physical copy of a Coachella photo book. The third Sights and Sounds Collection’s NFTs are priced at $60 each and would launch in an edition of 10,000.
Here it should be noted that a portion of the proceeds from each item would be donated to Give Directly, Lideres Campesinas, & Find Food Bank, and royalty will support the creators involved.
Coachella jumping onto the NFT bandwagon doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise. In November last year, Coachella’s parent company AEG renamed the Staples Center, the multi-purpose arena in Downtown Los Angeles, to the Crypto.com Arena.
Additionally, Coachella is neither the first music festival to experiment with crypto. Last year, New York’s Governor’s Ball offered NFTs in partnership with Coinbase.