Soulja Boy, LimeWire NFT collaboration leads to jokes about computer viruses
Do you remember LimeWire? The site has relaunched as an NFT marketplace using Soulja Boys 2007 track “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” in their ad. Now the rapper is trending on Twitter, with many joking that he will give their computers a virus.
Back in the early 2000s, the site was largely used to share and download media files. In 2010, however, it was shut down after losing the battle with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
The company was found responsible for a “significant amount of copyright infringement”, which the music industry estimated was close to $ 1 billion, Wired reported at the time. A federal judge found that as much as 93 percent of LimeWire’s traffic involved the transfer of unauthorized material. The RIAA first filed a lawsuit in 2006.
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Now the company is making a comeback. In July 2022, they launched a campaign that apparently made fun of their criminal past.
The ad shows a boy and a girl rushing home from school to download Soulja Boys hit, which is played in the background. After dancing to the tune, the clip cuts to them as adults, where they rediscover the mark and dance to the same song.
“Soulja Boy brought LimeWire back, and I think I’ll keep Spotify, I do not want viruses on my phone, please,” a user tweeted on July 13 along with several laughing emojis.
In another tweet, someone wrote: “If this is to be true [to] the original product, every NFT you think you got, would turn out to be a Soulja Boy song. “
A separate user then replied: “A Soulja Boy song and the like … five viruses that wall your computer.”
“Our ad is both a love letter to the 21st century and a celebration of the new LimeWire,” said the company’s global creative director Florestan Rösemann in a statement to Adweek. “Just like the characters in the commercial, many of us were teenagers when LimeWire was first around and are now adults to watch the relaunch of the brand.”
LimeWire’s goal is to make NFTs more accessible by allowing users to pay by credit card instead of cryptocurrency.
“We want to bring the NFT world to the mainstream and to people who are not interested in it right now,” Ivis Buric, head of communications at LimeWire, told the outlet. “NFTs are not just another buzzword – they can benefit people’s lives.”
LimeWire was founded by Mark Gorton in 2000. Today, the brand is owned by brothers and co-CEOs Paul and Julian Zehetmayr. In April, it was reported that the company raised more than $ 10 million to help fund the platform, which was originally focused on music-based NFTs.
