Popular rock band Linkin Park is back with a never-before-released song pulled from its archives, as well as a brand new music video—and it has a Web3 connection: it’s directed by noted digital artist Emily “pplpleasr” Yang and Maciej Kuciara, co-founders of Web3 video platform Shibuya.
A teaser for the “Lost” music video was shared through Linkin Park’s official social media channels late Wednesday credits pplpleasr and Kuciara as co-directors and showcases Mirai, the protagonist of Shibuya’s NFT-driven anime web series, “White Rabbit.” The video will be released at 12am ET on Friday.
The YouTube page lists Shibuya as the production company for the animated video, with AI startup Kaiber listed as a support studio. Kaiber uses artificial intelligence to generate animated video footage based on terms entered via its platform.
The countdown has begun to the world premiere of “Lost” music video tomorrow at 9pm PST. Set your reminder for the YouTube premiere: https://t.co/0lKN8i65Bv
Directed by @pplpleasr1 & @maciej_kuciara pic.twitter.com/PMja9i5ga9
— LINKIN PARK (@linkinpark) February 9, 2023
“Lost” is a previously unreleased song recorded during the sessions for “Meteora,” Linkin Park’s 2003 album that sold about 16 million copies worldwide. It’s being released as part of a 20th anniversary celebration around the album.
Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda is a noted Web3 aficionado who has released various projects in the NFT space, including artwork and an NFT mixtape called Ziggurats. Shinoda also collects NFTs and has invested in startups in the space, such as Web3 streaming music platform Audius.
Shibuya is a video platform that lets users purchase Ethereum NFT producer passes to help influence the creation of content by voting on branching narrative paths. The content is free to view, but only NFT holders can help shape the storylines. The startup, co-founded by pplpleasr and Kuciara in 2022, recently raised $6.9 million in funding.
“White Rabbit” is Shibuya’s first project, and hero Mirai apparently features in the Linkin Park video. It’s currently unclear whether the “Lost” video launch will be tied to additional content on the Shibuya platform, including NFTs.
Pplpleasr rose to prominence in the Web3 world in early 2021 as the NFT market was heating up, as her tokenized animated videos inspired by rising DeFi protocols sold for considerable sums at auction. She also designed a Fortune magazine cover and sold NFTs based on it, raising over $650,000 for journalistic causes.