Getty Reveals First NFT Drop, Featuring Stevie Nicks, David Bowie & More
The Alpha:
- Beginning March 21, 2023, Getty Images will release The ’70s Music & Culture Collection, a collection of images of musicians and cultural icons including Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, David Bowie, Stevie Nicks, The Rolling Stones and more.
- To release its first ever NFT release, Getty partnered with Candy Digital, a digital collectibles platform and marketplace that has previously helped Major League Baseball, Netflix, The WWE and more enter the Web3.
- Fans will be able to purchase the images, which will be minted on the Palm blockchain, on Candy.com with credit cards or USDC. Photographs in the collection will range in price from $25 to $200. Candy is also offering fans the opportunity to create an introductory photo for free for a limited time.
Dive deeper
Getty Images is one of the world’s leading platforms for images. With several popular platforms under its umbrella, including iStock, Unsplash and Photos.com, the Getty Images Archive contains over 80 million photographs. This archive gave the Getty’s curator of print sales and exhibitions, Shawn Waldron, the daunting task of assembling a collection for the company’s first digital collectibles release.
“We knew we really wanted to show the depth and breadth of Getty Images’ archives,” Waldron explained while speaking with nft now. “In a lot of ways, we were really just scratching the surface. We were kicking around different ideas for how to even approach the 70s. When we started digging [through the archives]we found different threads and you kind of let the content guide you.”
Getty’s upcoming drop includes images from six renowned photographers: Don Paulsen, David Redfern, Fin Costello, Richard Creamer, Steve Morley and Peter Keegan. Finding a through line to capture certain aspects of these photographers’ work presented Waldron with its own challenge.
“This first collection for Candy is interesting because we are exploring different photographers [and] each had his own specialty.”
Shawn Waldron
“The images stand alone, but they are also part of a larger, broader body of work,” Waldron elaborated. “So you have to understand where things fit into the narrative and that chronology. This first collection for Candy is interesting because we’re exploring different photographers [and] each had their own specialty. They were all working within the broader idea of 70s music, which was such an incredibly dynamic period: you have the birth of punk, the birth of disco, Laurel Canyon, glam rock in Britain, reggae, outlaw country. And you had this rise of music media, a real need for photographers to be out there covering these growing scenes.”
Of the thousands of photographs the Getty team sorted through, Waldron helped whittle the collection down to just 120 images. The first 100 photographs focus on the various music scenes of the 70s, with the remaining 20 devoted to Peter Keegan’s works of New York street scenes during the same time period.
“There was so much that was happening in New York that was really kind of a context for a lot of the broader cultural changes that were happening,” Waldron emphasized. “It all really came to life on the streets of New York, then [those 20 photos] give a very nice compliment with the others.”
Candy Digital’s partnership on this decline was natural, and the two have been in close contact since the platform’s inception. While creating digital collectibles with Major League Baseball, for example, Getty has served as a licensing partner for the images used in those collections. And while the Getty is very much a B2B business, the 70s Music & Culture Collection represents one of the stronger pushes into the world of interacting with fan bases in a more direct way.
“With Getty as a partner, we’ll be connecting with some of our existing customers, people who are mostly fans of NFTs and the digital future,” Candy Digital CEO and co-founder Scott Lawin told nft now. “But we also speak more directly to the traditional art market and to the traditional culture collector market.”
Lawin explained that people who buy the photos will retain limited usage rights, and could print the photographs on T-shirts and the like. However, Candy is working with Getty on potential future products that include different types of collectible commercial rights to “empower the next generation of creators,” Lawin noted.
In terms of potential utility, Lawin made it clear that The ’70s Music & Culture Collection will focus more on the historical significance and artistic and personal value of the photographs that make up the collection, while hinting at possible future utility experimentation in future collection releases.
“[These drops] is not just an opportunity to create a digital product, make some money and move on.”
Scott Lawin
“Along with different types of products, there can be physical twins, physical utility, there can be experiences to collect or unlock a certain set that people have,” Lawin offered as a glimpse of future collection tools.
What will be next?
Candy Digital has been able to win over partners like Netflix and MLB through a smooth and transparent introduction to the opportunities that Web3 affords its fanbases. Another strategy they’ve used has been to emphasize their product rather than the format it comes in, hence the company’s lack of affection for using the term “NFT.” And partnering with Getty Images is a natural next step for the platform as it prepares to accelerate significant growth into the Web3 arena in 2023.
“[These drops] is not just an opportunity to create a digital product, make some money and move on,” Lawin emphasized about the platform’s approach to digital releases. “We’re entering into long-term agreements and long-term partnerships to really explore what this technology can do and how it can engage their customers in a different way.”
The 70s Music & Culture Collection is coming to Candy.com on March 21st.
