Jack White has distanced himself from The White Stripes NFTs released last year, and expressed his dislike of the format.
In April 2021, the band announced that a visualiser of the The Glitch Mob remix of their track ‘Seven Nation Army’ would be sold as an NFT also containing a number of unique art pieces.
The remix also landed on streaming services a few days later and was then available for purchase on physical vinyl in June through White’s Third Man Records.
Now, in a new interview with The Atlantic, White expressed his distaste for NFTs and said that last year’s release was driven by management.
“I don’t want to come out and say ‘I had nothing to do with this,’ ” he said. “It is my band. We allowed it to happen. But it didn’t really interest me. It’s not something we’ll be doing very much of.”
He said that he sees NFTs as a way to get fans to pay extra money for things they could get for free. “It gives off a vibe of ‘Well, if people are stupid enough to give me money for this, I’ll take it,’ ” he said.
On the subject of music in the digital space, White also discussed his involvement in the launch of streaming service TIDAL. He was one of a number of celebrity musicians with an ownership stake in the platform, including Madonna, Beyonce and Jay-Z.
“I don’t think [TIDAL] was promoted properly from the get-go,” he said. “It quickly became a lesson: Maybe people don’t like it when the artists own the art gallery … It sort of gets to ‘Eat the rich’ kind of stuff.”
White’s has been touring in support of his latest album ‘Fear Of The Dawn’. Shows from the tour are being made available for fans to listen to as soundboard recordings.