How I bought the Kings of Leon album NFT, and how you can too

Earlier this month Kings of Leon made history as the first band to release an album as an NFT. I think this will quickly move from a historic event to the norm, but Kings of Leon was the first and I’m pretty excited to have been one of the first ~1,600 people to get the album NFT.

Which leads me to the question I got from just about everyone I told about it. “What the heck do you get in an NFT of an album?” Often followed by, “I’m so confused about how the heck to buy this?”

One good friend of mine, who is actually a software developer here in SF asked if I could hop on a Zoom to walk him through it. When I was done he said, “yikes, that’s confusing!” So I figured, if he was confused, probably a lot of other people are confused and it might be helpful to walk through the process.

So if you’ve been scratching your head wondering how to buy the Kings of Leon album NFT, or if you’re still on step one wondering, what the heck is the Kings of Leon album NFT, read on.

Okay, so before I dive into the details I want to make sure that if you’re reading this, you know what an NFT is. If you don’t I’d recommend reading this article about NFTs in the New York Times.

Now that we got that out of the way I’m going to assume if you’re still reading, you know what an NFT is. So let’s answer the first question you might have – what do you get when you buy the Kings of Leon album NFT?

What is in the Kings of Leon NFT

Just to make it extra clear, you get three things with the NFT purchase:

  • All the songs on the album as a digital download – 11 mp3 files
  • A limited edition NFT Golden Eye Vinyl – a physical limited edition vinyl (record) of the album shipped to you. This is the only non-digital item that is part of the NFT drop
  • Digital collectible album artwork – animated GIF of the album cover with that little cherry in the bottom corning bouncing around

Here’s a look at the folder contents when I downloaded the NFT:

Kings of Leon NFT Folder Contents

As you can see, the folder has all the songs in the album as mp3 files and then what most people usually associate with NFTs these days, original limited edition album artwork.

The Kings of Leon album NFT is available for another week through March 19th 2021 and as you can see from the image above, all unsold limited edition NFTs will be burned after the sales period ends.

Okay – so now you know what you get when you buy the NFT, so now for the good stuff since you have a week left to do it – how do you actually buy the Kings of Leon album NFT?

Step 1: Create a MetaMask account

Metamask.io

MetaMask is a crypto wallet and one of the most-used/accepted wallets when it comes to NFTs. If you’re planning on doing anything in the NFT world, you’re going to want a MetaMask wallet.

It takes less than two minutes to create a MetaMask account and you’re going to want to add the Chrome extension and pin it. Boom, onto step two!

Step 2: Send Ethereum to your MetaMask wallet

If you’re going to be dappling in the NFT world, you’re going to also need to be dabbling in the crypto world, which really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, right?

In most cases I think people reading this (in the US at least) will be transferring Ethereum from CoinBase to MetaMask. At a high-level this process is pretty darn simple – just get your wallet address from MetaMask, head over to CoinBase, click the Send/Receive button, paste the address, enter how much ETH you want to send, and you’re done.

One quick note – for the Kings of Leon Album NFT drop I’d make sure to put $100 worth of ETH in your MetaMask wallet.

Step 3: Buy the Kings of Leon album NFT on OpenSea.io

The NFT itself is available to purchase through OpenSea.io which you can get to either directly on OpenSea or by going to YellowHeart.io which has this NFT plus a bunch of other NFTs related to the album.

If you go through YellowHeart, you’ll just scroll down until you see this:

 Kings of Leon NFT YellowHeart

Click the “Buy” button and it will take you to the OpenSea.io page I shared above.

When you click that blue “Buy Now” button on OpenSea you’ll be prompted to sign into your MetaMask wallet, i.e. the next screen you see will be:

Sign into MetaMask

And that’s it, once you sign in you’ll authorize the transaction and then, like all things blockchain, you’ll need to wait a bit until it shows up. If you haven’t used crypto much before, don’t panic if a few minutes after making the purchase you still don’t have the NFT, it takes time, I suggest just taking a break and coming back to your computer and you’ll be in good shape.

That’s it, three pretty simple steps and while it’s definitely very different from going to a website, entering your credit card number and being done, NFTs are new and different so you may as well just bite the bullet and get used to it!

I hope this post is helpful, as of me writing this there’s still a week left to buy the Kings of Leon album NFT so if the complexity of the process was getting in the way, hopefully I’ve helped make it easier. As for how the value of this album will change over time, your guess is as good as mine. I think it’s pretty special since it’s the very first album to ever be released as an NFT, and there can only ever be one first.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions, suggestions, or you just want to say hello, feel free to jump into the comment section below 🕺

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton