Yngwie Malmsteen launches his first NFT collection

Swedish shredder Yngwie Malmsteen has launched his first collection of NFT pieces, having joined up with digital art marketplace OpenSea for the venture.

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The digital NFT items, copies of Malmsteen’s new album Parabellum, are backed by physical vinyl releases, extremely limited and unique to each NFT. There are four unique NFTs in the collection: a set of four splatter vinyl albums, a set of four red vinyl albums, and two “one of one” (completely unique) signed and numbered gatefold vinyls.

NFTs’ ownership is recorded on a digital ledger blockchain, meaning each is completely unique and technically cannot be duplicated. They can represent any digital files such as music, videos, and visual art.

You can see Malmsteen’s NFT collection here.

The trend has boomed in 2021, however has faced some criticism – most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain, meaning that they are bought and sold using the cryptocurrency Ether. This makes them incredibly energy-consumptive. One estimate for the average energy usage of an Ethereum NFT transaction placed it at 35KWh – enough to keep a refrigerator running for about a month.

Recently, blues rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa teamed up with Heritage Auctions to jump on the craze himself. His collection included NFT tokens representing ownership of a 1959 Les Paul, a 1963 Fender Vibroverb and their physical counterparts.

A song, entitled Broken Record, was also part of the collection, with the NFT representing full synchronisation rights to the track. “It’s basically like buying a one-song record company,” Bonamassa said of the auction in a statement. “I’m proud of the song whether three people hear it or 30 million hear it. It doesn’t matter. My approach would not have changed.”