COACHELLA is entering the NFT business after announcing this week they will be auctioning off ten lifetime passes to the festival in the form of NFTs, a collection they have named the Coachella Keys.
In a new partnership with cryptocurrency exchange FTX US, Coachella has revealed each NFT will grant the owner lifetime festival access every April and “Coachella produced virtual experiences… forever”.
The pass will also include VIP on-site experiences for the 2022 edition of the festival such as front row access to the Coachella stage, onstage access at the Sahara Tent, and an exclusive dinner cooked by a celebrity chef in the Rose Garden.
In an announcement on their website, Coachella said the collectables are “a first of its kind opportunity” and urged potential customers to “embrace new technology to connect & discover”.
A music festival offering lifetime access is one thing, but to do it through an NFT is a shrewd move by Coachella and will likely raise huge sums during the auction. Each key will have its own unique features and perks, with the festival suggesting “there’s no telling what else these NFT keys will unlock in the near future”.
The Coachella Keys Collection can be found via this link. The auction is set to begin on the 4th of February at 10 am Pacific Time and will run for exactly one week.
“We’ve all seen how NFTs enable true ownership of art and media on the internet. We wanted to take it one step further and use NFTs to enable ownership of experiences in the real world, too,” Sam Schoonover, Innovation Lead for Coachella, said in a statement.
“Only blockchain technology can give us the unique ability to offer tradable lifetime passes to Coachella for the first time ever,” he continued. “We’re excited about building new utility and community for our fans with NFTs, and in FTX we found the partner that we trust to provide us with infrastructure and support to help us usher in this new frontier.”
Meanwhile, Coachella 2022 headliner Ye said this week that he is committed to physical art forms, vehemently declaring on social media that he will not be jumping on the NFT bandwagon. Yet.
In a letter posted on his Instagram, the rapper wrote: “My focus is on building real products in the real world; real food, real clothes, real shelter. Do not ask me to do a fucking NFT. Ye. Ask me later”.