If you are a 90s kid and an early adopter of computers, you might have heard of and used LimeWire at some point. It was a popular peer-to-peer file-sharing tool created by Mark Gorton that was released almost 22 years ago, back in May 2000. It was, however, discontinued back in 2010 due to a copyright infringement case. Now, an Austrian entrepreneur duo has taken the responsibility of reviving the popular platform as an NFT marketplace focused on music, content, and artworks.
Austria-based serial entrepreneurs and brothers Julian and Paul Zehetmayr bought the rights of LimeWire to create a brand new company, LimeWire GmbH, with no affiliation to the original LimeWire LLC team. The Zehetmayr brothers, now the co-founders of the company, intend to launch LimeWire as a “mainstream-ready, digital collectibles marketplace for art and entertainment, initially focusing on music.”
Now, one of the primary objectives of LimeWire as an NFT marketplace would be to provide access to NFTs and digital collectibles to those without a digital crypto wallet or any knowledge about NFTs. Interested buyers would be able to buy NFTs from LimeWire using their credit or debit cards via Wyre’s payment system, which is also used by the popular NFT marketplace OpenSea. So, LimeWire’s primary goal is similar to what Neon is doing with its NFT ATM, though the former will only focus on musical NFTs initially.
“It’s important to note that we are not relaunching LimeWire as an alternative to streaming platforms, but rather as an additional channel for artists to sell exclusive music and art directly to collectors,” said Julian Zehetmayr in a statement.
