Photo by: Kevork Djansezian/Staff
Whitney Houston’s music is still being sought after, as fans worldwide miss her presence. A fan paid nearly $1 million for an unreleased demo of the singer.
According to Billboard, the song was sold for $999,999 in a nonfungible token auction on the OneOf platform, Dec. 14th which is funded by music entrepreneur Quincy Jones and runs on the Tezos blockchain.
The Whitney Houston OneOf One NFT, a never-before-heard demo track from Houston at age 17, SOLD for $999,999! Thank you to all who made this incredible moment in music and NFT history possible!
@dianaesinclair #BeOneOf #whitneyhouston #NFTnews #WomeninNFTs pic.twitter.com/cmdSuyfOBH
— OneOf (@OneOfNFT) December 15, 2021
The song was a demo tape of the young diva performing before she was signed to Arista Records by Clive Davis.
OneOf announced earlier this month at Miami Art Week that it will auction off this antique full-length demo. Houston recorded this song while she was only 17 years old, and it is one of her early solo performances.
The bidding began on Dec. 13 with a price of $125,000 and ended on Tuesday, just a dollar short of a $1 million bid from a fan with the handle AlwaysLoved. AlwaysLoved will feature artwork produced by Diana Sinclair, another 17-year-old prodigy, in addition to the Houston recording.
The Whitney E. Houston Foundation, which was founded in 2020 and is led by Pat Houston, the singer’s sister-in-law, will benefit from the proceeds from the sale of this collection. The Whitney Houston Foundation for Children, founded by the singer in 1989, is not the same as this.
In a statement, Sinclair highlighted what it was like to prepare to produce something that would complement a young Houston’s unrivaled talent.
“For this video, I took a lot of inspiration from Whitney’s ‘Every Woman’ music video which featured many Black women of all ages and the ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ song which had lots of fun colors,” the artist shared.
Sinclair continued.
“Creating something fresh, young, and colorful was the goal for this project, as well as bringing Whitney’s legacy into the modern space through digital art and technology.”
On the NFT collection’s web page, Sinclair also expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to work on the project.
“Being able to collaborate with her music and her family really transformed the way that I saw her in her music videos. I feel more connected to the person that she was. Some of the messages that I put across in my artwork as well, they’re very similar.”
According to the NFT’s description, this creation is an “OneOfOne” and “includes the promo film,” and the winner will receive “complete personal use rights” to the work. It’s also a piece from a bigger body of work.
Several pieces from Whitney Houston’s OneOf NFT collection will be auctioned off at various levels. Fans will be able to bid on seldom-seen historical images of the singer from her early life on the gold and platinum tiers, and her career will be presented in new scrapbook-like animations.
Fans will be able to see video artwork inspired by Houston’s catalog created by Sinclair, as well as replicas of other music videos such as “The Greatest Love of All” and “I Will Always Love You” on the diamond tier.
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