Once Upon a Time in Shaolin – known as the most expensive piece of music ever sold – is now being reborn as a fixed-term digital ISA

In a twisting tale of legal loopholes and dubious financial practice, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin (the one-of-one album created by de facto Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA and group associate Cilvaringz) is now being released as an NFT… kind of.

The news broke yesterday (June 13) in a statement from the album’s new owners PleasrDAO, a cryptocurrency collective specialising in digital artwork. “The world’s most expensive album is now available for $1,” they wrote on X. “Enter the chamber and secure a copy.”

The post came just days after their announcement that they would be suing the album’s previous owner Martin Shkreli (once dubbed ‘America’s most hated man’) for illegally duplicating and streaming the project to his followers.

Espousing vague notions of the devaluation of music in the digital age, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was originally conceived by RZA and Cilvaringz as a one-of-kind art piece and sold under the condition that it couldn’t be commercially exploited for 88 years, or until the year 2103. Unfortunately, the reality wasn’t quite as idealistic. The project’s first owner, Shkreli, streamed parts of the album to followers on X to celebrate Donald Trump’s election back in 2016, to the chagrin of creators RZA and Cilvaringz. In response, the pair attempted to buy the project back, but were prevented by their own terms of sale.

This latest release exploits the 88-year commercial embargo and legal phrasing of its acquisition to generate artificial demand in the Web3 space, progressively releasing pieces of the album as purchases of the NFT accumulate. Sold under the tagline “2103 will come sooner than you think”, the album has basically been reduced to a fixed-term ISA that will release when around 28 million people buy the token. (In actuality, however, PleasrDAO have only managed to acquire rights to 16 of the 31 tracks, meaning only around half of the project will be released).

In a nod to RZA and Cilvaringz’ concerns about the value of music in the streaming era, PleasrDAO also promised that the projects’ contributing artists will be receiving a share of profits. Cilvaringz, however, is the only Wu-Tang member so far to publicly support the announcement. It’s worth noting that, in the wake of the project’s first unveiling back in 2014, foundational Wu-Tang member and project contributor Method Man famously called the release “stupid” and stated that he “can’t stand Cilvaringz”.

This latest news received generally negative responses from fans online, with comment sections almost immediately being flooded with calls to pirate the project. One user even proclaimed “Shkreli or his mates should just leak the album, this is even dumber than the original concept”. It’s really saying something when infamous POS Martin Shkreli, who once bought the rights to HIV/Aids-related treatment Dararaprim only to hike the price up by 5,600 per cent overnight, is being challenged for biggest dum-dum (though his own story is still stupider than everything else combined).

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was, once upon a time, a somewhat interesting concept. Now, the only thing left to say is… CASH RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME!

Source : Dazed - Jun 17, 2024