Wu-Tang Is *Not For The Children

Now it’s only for the DAOs.

Those of you who missed the 2021 bull run (or have suppressed all memories of it) may not remember Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs. These DeFi power structures emerged as an FU to TradFi power structures like governments, banks, and corporations, with the intent to “democratize decision-making.” But as it turns out, by “democratize”, they just meant, “members pay for voting power.” And, by “decision-making”, they meant, “deciding whether or not to spend $3 million on a book of Dune concept art.” 

(They did.)

DAOs have since fallen out of favor among the culture at large and even many crypto enthusiasts, as people increasingly realized that “pay-to-play” isn’t a revolutionary organizational model, but rather a core tenet of such fundamental TradFi institutions as, say, the federal government, or Scientology. However, some individual DAOs have stuck around, tethered to the conversation by the exorbitantly expensive cultural artifacts their unique combination of rebranded capitalism and crypto bro crowdfunding afforded them. 

Enter PleasrDAO. Back in 2021, these degens purchased the 1-of-1 Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for $4.75 million. To that point, the album had only been heard by a veritable who’s who: the Wu-Tang Clan and co.; former owner and infamous IRL supervillain Martin “Pharma Bro” Shkreli; and, in brief excerpts, his Twitter followers and a handful of art world heavies.

Until now! (Sort of.) (Not really.) (At all.)

PleasrDAO made waves this week with the announcement that it would release Once Upon a Time in Shaolin as a non-fungible token, or NFT. If you somehow missed those, NFTs are unique blockchain-based digital identifiers — basically, virtual provenance. They’re often tied to works of art as a permanent tracker of their ownership and value. NFTs may be most famous for getting celebrities and rich people to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on JPGs of cartoon apes. But they do have tons of actually useful use cases, from ensuring artist rights and royalties to verifying digital identity.

This just isn’t one of them.

See, PleasrDAO didn’t actually release Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. It released a five-minute snippet, made available with the purchase of a $1 NFT. But there’s a wrinkle: with each $1 spent, it will knock 88 seconds off a clock counting down to the album’s full release. At the time of the NFT drop, the release date was a little less than 80 years from now: October 8th, 2103.

Let’s do some quick math. $1 might not sound like a lot. After all, $1 for 5 minutes of music is roughly what those of who still buy albums are paying for an average 45-minute LP. However, for the countdown clock to hit zero, fans will need to cumulatively pony up a cool $28 million. 

Now, unless PleasrDAO somehow has the secret sauce to singlehandedly solve web3’s mass adoption problem, 28 million people are not going to buy this thing. In 2021, at the height of NFT mania, little more than 2.5 million wallets were linked to individual NFT traders. What’s more, the top selling albums of the 2020s so far, Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous and Taylor Swift’s Midnights, have yet to crack 10 million in sales, and that’s including streams.

So, graciously, PleasrDAO has provided buyers with a couple of alternate options. Pay $111 and you’ll knock off a whole two and a half hours (!) until release. Pay $1,111 and you’ll knock off a whopping three days. 

In other words, unless 28 million people are willing to dive headfirst into the wonderful world of web3, 25,000 people are willing to shell out a small fortune for 5 minutes of music, or some proportional combination thereof, we may never hear this “release” in our lifetime. 

But guess who will? The champions of democracy over at PleasrDAO — who will coincidentally also be lining their pockets with whatever funds they do eke out of the fans who are willing to pay to feel like a part of the cultural zeitgeist without realizing what their money is (or isn’t) buying. 

Finally, some fine print:

1. The proceeds aren’t just going to PleasrDAO, but also to the album’s creators. More on them in a second.

2. The 2103 release date isn’t PleasrDAO’s idea. The 88-year commercial exploitation runway was contracted prior to the initial sale of the album. Fortunately, the DAO was able to “negotiate” the NFT release model, likely once the aforementioned creators realized NFTs can make artists a lot more money than Spotify streams. Which, in a vacuum, is a good thing. Except…

3. Once Upon a Time in Shaolin isn’t actually a Wu-Tang album. It was the brainchild of loosely-Wu-Tang-affiliated producer Cilvaringz, and RZA is the only original member actively involved in its release. Although it does boast appearances from all living members of the group, it has been disowned by Method Man as “fake” and “BS.”  

4. On top of that, it’s also a late-era album from a music group who peaked roughly 25 years ago. Wu-Tang or not, it’s probably not even a good album. 

5. Did we forget to mention PleasrDAO only has commercial rights to 16 of the 31 tracks so far? So it’s not all this hoopla for one album — it’s all this for hoopla for half of one. 

TL;DR: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations? More like Dirty Ass OpportunisticmotherfuckersouttopartfoolsfromtheirhardearnedETH.

Oh, yeah, whoops. I buried the lede. This is an Ethereum project. Go figure.

—Chad