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Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park) Will Publish New Music As A Generative NFT Series On Tezos

Mike Shinoda

Mike Shinoda, a founding member of Linkin Park, has a long music career winning an impressive amount of awards such as the American Music Awards (6 x), Billboard Music Awards (2 x), Grammy Awards (2 x), MTV Music Awards (25 x) and 34 other awards worldwide.

It was also just announced that his Deftones remix was nominated for a Grammy.

Besides being a gifted musician, Mike Shinoda is both an art collector and an art creator. He has been part of the NFT scene for a while now and has shown a deeper interest in NFT’s and the possible use-cases as he expressed in several interviews on crypto talk shows.

He entered the Tezos scene a while ago and while he started collecting a variety of NFT’s himself, he also sold several NFTs for very affordable prices. His last sale was done through auction though and resulted in a bidding war that ended with the highest bid of 2,750 XTZ.

In his collection, we see, amongst others, pieces of successful Tezos-NFT series like Tezzards, PRJKTNEON, Chop Sumos, Randomly Common Skeles, Crypto Legends, NEONZ, and a certain Tezos Domain. 

Either way, it’s fair to say he has been around for a while, knows his technicals, and is a true part of the Tezos NFT scene. This makes us even more excited to see him taking his efforts on Tezos to the next level.

ZIGGURATS

Mike Shinoda announced that he will publish new music as a generative NFT series called Ziggurats and it will be on Tezos. The series will not be “just a song” — it’s something different. 

A generative NFT series is a series of NFT’s that are all similar, yet unique. Similar in the sense that there is a recurring common basis.

Unique in the sense that out of a preselected, large amount of inputs (in this case both music and art), a computer algorithm produces random, unique outputs. 

Each NFT in the Ziggurats series will be similar in the sense that the lyrics will be the same for every song, but both music and cover art for every NFT will be unique.

The song has the length of about seven minutes and the music will be composed of a variation of musical layers that will be rearranged and put together in random different compositions by a generative program.

It should almost feel intimate, unique and personal, yet it will also be a random composition by Mike Shinoda that collectors will be able to own as NFT’s on the Tezos blockchain.

The outcomes of the NFT’s will still be a musical composition as opposed to just random noise because of the fact that all of the possible inputs are of similar tempos and similar musical keys.

Assuming that the outcome of the project matches expectations, this will be a huge advancement in musical history. The public mint for the NFT series will be on December 2nd.  

“Ziggurats is a music project, first and foremost. It’s a collection of 5000 mini-mixtapes, each almost 7 minutes long, each one with unique music and unique cover art.

The vocals are the same on all, but the music and the artwork is built from layers, made by me, assembled in unique combinations so that no two are alike. The cover art is done in illustrative, profile-pic style.” – Mike Shinoda

On Discord he stated:

“I liked the idea of a program taking elements and mixing-and-matching to create different outputs. Creating collectible pieces—each one unique. But I wanted to do it with music. 

Thankfully, I’ve created a lot of material this past few years. I started sifting through all the beats and sketches I’ve made, looking for connections between them.

Similar tempos, similar keys, cool parts. All the best bits got poured into one long session. The track ended up feeling like some of the 90s hip hop I grew up on, so I decided to start writing some verses.”

Reveal And Scarcity

The full 5,000 piece series will be sold from the project website ziggurats.xyz . The price per NFT will be 15 XTZ and the content of the NFTs will not be revealed until the complete series is sold out.

As in most generative NFT series, there will be scarcity levels where some NFT’s are more rare than others. 

“There will be varying rarities. At the top, there are five ultra rare pieces, where the art was made from scratch, not from layers. The music will be evenly distributed across the collection, so the rarity is dictated by the art.” 

For The Fans

Not all people appreciate and/ or understand the developments towards NFTs. To cater to this group of fans, there will also be a release for the fans that do not want to buy an NFT.

“For those who just want to listen, a unique version will be available on streaming services.” 

A sneak peak of the project can be heard and seen here. 

Technical support for this project has been provided by @mycodecrafting, a well known developer in the Tezos ecosystem. 

Check out the Mike Shinoda Discord channel here 

Mike Shinoda on Twitter here