Kings Of Leon reveal why they decided to release their new album as an NFT

Kings of Leon made history when they released their eighth studio album, When You See Yourself, last week. In addition to the standard digital and physical formats, they also became the first band ever to make a record available as a non-fungible token (NFT).

The four-piece was recently featured on iHeartRadio's web series, "The Box," where host Emily Curl pulled out different mementos from throughout the band's career. After reminiscing about days of yore, they discussed the reason why they decided to release the album as an NFT.

"The way they explained it to us a few weeks ago and kind of got us excited about it and on board was, it’s kind of just a way to almost cut out the middle man a little bit more in music for artists directly sharing art with our fans," bassist Jared Followill explained. "Hopefully if it becomes a thing in the future, artists make more money, since some of it’s kind of been lost. You can do with that whatever you want and give it to charitable things that we’re involved in, so it just seemed really right for us. Especially in a time where we’re not touring and crews aren’t touring, a way to just do something a little more futuristic and try to be pioneers in something.”

“In this day and age, you have to be one step ahead of the competition and this was something that they brought to us and we got excited about," drummer Nathan Followill added. "I’ve been dabbling in the crypto world for a few years now, so I knew a little bit about it but I have never seen it on this scale, as far as a band releasing music.”

For those unfamiliar with NFTs, they're a type cryptocurrency that holds assets like art, tickets, and music instead of money. They operate on a publicly accessible and transparent network called a blockchain, which means anyone can see the details of the transaction. Computers involved in the transactions become part of the network, which continuously updates and can’t be hacked. The value of NFTs is subjective and fluctuates (think stocks). In the case of KoL's new album, the NFT version is going for $50 and will be sold for two weeks and then never made again.

This article was first published on iheart.com and is republished here with permission