Speaking to CNBC, Time Magazine’s President Keith Grossman laid out a pretty bullish idea for integrating NFTs into the nearly one-hundred-year-old company – turning subscribers into online owners of its unique cover art.
During the interview, Grossman explained how companies have gotten into the tempo of consumers as ‘renters’ of content and services. While effective for the businesses, they provided more innate value for the company than the consumer, with the latter’s data being another valuable stream of information and capital.
By integrating NFTs, Grossman discussed how they could empower consumers, turning them into owners and granting greater autonomy over their data.
Of course, this aspiration is exactly that. But, as Grossman explains, TIME has already been hard at work with its TIMEPieces NFT series.
“Forget Bored Apes for a second. When you move out of the collectible space and focus on the community [of creators and artists] … the tokens not only allow you to verify ownership, but it allows them to affix a royalty on future sales.”
Split into Genesis Inspiration, Long Necktie Women of the Year, Slices of Time, and Beatclub Collection series’, all represent the exclusive works of art that adorned the cover of TIME Magazine, making them digital pieces of history.
In total, TIME has airdropped 20,000 of these since its launch in September 2021. Since then, over 12,000 wallets were created and subsequently used to store a TIMEPieces NFT – while also being linked to the website.
The aspiration of empowering owners and digitalising subscriptions through NFTs is clearly not far from reality. These NFTs also provide special subscription privileges and invites to company events, along with autonomy and exclusive art.
Even before the NFT drop, TIME enabled cryptocurrency payments for subscriptions in a very forward-thinking attitude toward blockchain. But this attitude is clearly driven by Grossman, an outspoken advocate for blockchain technology.