Martin Shkreli was said to have paid $2 million to own the Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind album, “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.” Its new buyers paid $4 million.
Martin Shkreli was said to have paid $2 million to own the Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind album, “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.” Its new buyers paid $4 million.
The world's most expensive album ever sold is now on sale for $1. Recorded in secret over six years, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is the seventh studio album from the Wu-Tang Clan.
“The album itself is kind of the O.G. NFT,” said Mr. Johnson, 34, who was proudly sporting a Wu-Tang T-shirt.
To tie “Once Upon a Time” to the digital realm, an NFT was created to stand as the ownership deed for the physical album, said Peter Scoolidge, a lawyer who specializes in cryptocurrency and NFT deals and was involved in the transaction. The 74 members of PleasrDAO — the abbreviation in its name identifies it as a “decentralized autonomous organization” — share collective ownership of the NFT deed, and thus own the album.
As the owners, they can listen to the 31 tracks on its two CDs, ogle its engraved nickel-silver box and leaf through the leather-bound parchment book that are part of the item’s overall package. But, for now at least, PleasrDAO’s members are still bound by the original restrictions that RZA and Cilvaringz imposed on Mr. Shkreli, including that it cannot be released to the general public in any form until 2103 (88 years from its initial sale in 2015). Archive link https://web.archive.org/web/20211021081900/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/arts/music/wu-tang-clan-once-upon-a-time-in-shaolin.html
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Is there a reason why they picked 88 years after its initial sale?
88 years happens to be 7 years off from the expiry of copyrights in USA, and they started to work on the album ~6 years before the "release".
It could be related to that somehow, maybe they used copyrighted material on the album that would go public domain that year
Wouldn't the songs themselves go public domain right around then?
I think it’s lifetime of the creator + 70 years, so unless they die in the next several years… no, the copyright on the album would outlast whatever they perhaps sampled illegally.., but maybe they sampled someone younger than them like a Taylor Swift…
Who fucking knows
To steal a joke from Seth Meyers,
88 is better than 69 because you get 8 twice.