Songs by virus: Company selling COVID-19 sound for NFT, Science News

Can you hear COVID-19? Regardless of your answer, a company is trying to sell the sound of Covid in NFT (non-fungible tokens) form for a sum of $285.

A company named Viromusic has come up with the idea of translating the genetic code of COVID-19 into music and selling it in form of NFT.

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“Viromusic is an exciting new NFT audio collection of songs that are created by the virus itself! The songs are made using the genetic sequence inside the Coronavirus,” the website reads.

Experts will take the genetic code of coronavirus using a DNA sequencer. This will return a long string of letters G, A, T and C. This string will then be broken down into three-letter blocks and those will be assigned a musical note.

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After that, a dedicated software will hunt for series of these broken down blocks which will be put in a way to make it musical. Then experts at Viromusic will add backing instruments and beat to it to make it into a song.

“Using a technique called DNA Sonification, the melody in the songs is derived entirely from the viral sequence.  Every note in the melody is part of the step-by-step instructions the virus uses to make more copies of itself,” the website reads.

As of now, the company has already created 10,000 songs in the coronavirus list, ranging from slow melodic to energetic rock music. Every song in this collection is ‘one of a kind’ as every track has its own unique viral melody, the company claims.