Wu-Tang Clan will sell only a single copy of their new album
 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomal...-secret-album/

This is a phenomenal idea: Wu-Tang clan recorded a double album in secret and will be releasing ONLY ONE COPY of it.

To frame it as an artistic statement is also phenomenal.

The repercussions are amazing. Think about it. If the buyer gets some performance rights s/he can also make money from it. But once it's released into the wild internet, it's all over. If anyone can download it, it goes from the most exclusive item to only a somewhat-exclusive item, an artifact of the 2010s.

Fascinating.

The logistics for pulling this off are going to be considerable. Especially if they are letting people listen to it with headphones at music festivals. Even with very tight security for paying customers, it would be so easy for an insider to make a pirated recording. The devil is in the details.

It's a great idea though.

1. "Now we know who uploaded the torrent."
2. Is the album really that bad?
3. It's the 90 minute re-mix of John Cage's 4'33" silence.

Let's say you were at the swap meet, or something, and you saw a recording, a bootleg purporting to be this album. How valuable is it? And how would you know? I mean, how would you know it's what it says it is?

I'd tell them to check out my gravel pit.

so smrt

What they're really doing is getting payment up-front from their distributor and forcing them to take the inevitable piracy loss. As it stands, they already make just one album, and give it away for free to the record distribution company, who then sells it as best they can and gives a portion of what they make to the artist.

What will probably happen is a bidding war between distribution companies, which means the price will have to be a realistic reflection of what they would have gotten anyway, since the distributors know their business and know how many they can expect to sell in the legitimate market. What Wu-Tang is hoping will happen is a collector will buy it for more than they can ever make back selling it, and they won't care because they're a collector.

There are millions of reproductions of the Mona Lisa, but the original is still immensely valuable. I wonder if this will follow the same paradigm.

Maybe the Sultan of Brunei is a Wu Tan fan. Or that guy who wrote his name in the sand in Dubai. Hamad or something like that.

Edit: Whoah, I just went to go look at that guy's name in the sand, and he erased it. It's filled in now. Maybe he felt a little silly.

The Mona Lisa has a bit of a head start in developing "buzz." And that painting is now only famous for being famous.

Is Wu-Tang clan really any good?

Are they selling exclusive rights to their album or are they just selling the album?

Do I have to follow the link and read the article?

My butt cheek hurts.

Sorry about ur finger.

yeah they are selling the only copy of the artwork which does not confer the rights to reproduction. E.g. If I sell you a painting, you own only that painting, not the right to make and sell reproductions of it.

No, actually quite terrible, but we're talking about them.

But that box should be worth at least a buck three eighty.

You can put your weed in there...