Last Thursday, PleasrDAO launched The Album, a $1 open edition on Base that lasts until 2103 (78 years).

It gives holders an encrypted NFT copy of legendary rap group Wu-Tang Clan’s 10-year-old secret album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.

As if that weren't wild enough, both Martin Shkreli and the US Department of Justice previously owned the album, and now its total sales could reach $34 million.

I briefly mentioned this Friday, but it’s not every day that an NFT story gets picked up by Forbes, Reuters, Pitchfork and the internet’s busiest music nerd, so let’s dive in a little more.

Context

Here’s a quick run-through of the events leading up to last week:

2014: Disgusted by the effects of streaming and piracy on the value of music, Wu Tang’s producers press an album, secretly recorded years prior, on a single two-CD copy, with all other digital files deleted.

2015: The album is auctioned off online to an anonymous buyer for $2 million, with the condition that it cannot be commercialized until 2103. This anon turns out to be hated pharma bro turned CT darling Martin Shkreli. The album’s now the most expensive work of music ever.

2018: Following Shkreli’s incarceration for fraud, the US Department of Justice seizes the album.

2021: PleasrDAO purchases the album from the DoJ for $4 million and promises to make it available to the public. You can see their original video announcement here, in all of its peak 2021 bubble glory.

2024, June 9th: Shkreli hosts a “Wu tang official listening party” where he streams the album to 4.9k listeners, showing he made copies of his original purchase (I mean, I would too).

2024, June 10th: Shrekli gets sued by PleasrDAO for diminishing the value of the album they legally own. A judge issues a restraining order blocking Shrekli from playing any more of the songs (top 10 funniest restraining orders).

Which finally leads us to last Thursday, June 13th…

Pleasr launches The Album after listening events at majestic-looking churches (the album’s owner is legally allowed to play the music at gatherings)

Mint details

This $1 open edition Base NFT is an encrypted copy of the album that can be converted into an $ALBUM fungible coin through ERC-404 functionality (this last part doesn’t seem to be live yet).

Pleasr managed to skirt the commercialization ban by negotiating the rights from Wu-Tang’s producers.

Amusingly, that article also mentions that they only own the rights to 16 out of the 31 total tracks (so far), so they are technically selling only half the album.

The year 2103 is the current due date for the music’s decryption, but each mint reduces the remaining time by 88 seconds.

There’s even a leaderboard showing those who have reduced the counter the most:

This also means that it would cost ~$28 million to fully unlock the album right now, making the total lifetime sales for Once Upon a Time in Shaolin a whopping $34 million.

Pleasr has teased that there are other ways to speed up the release apart from minting the albums (so far ~244k sold), but we’re still waiting on more info.

Our take

This is a weird one.

An album that was supposed to be enjoyed as a 1/1 by a single person could now be owned by up to 28 million people thanks to crypto fractionalization.

It probably won’t reach that number but the increased liquidity from the fungible conversion makes this like a presale for a memecoin that already has mainstream attention.

And we don’t even know if the music is good – it’s the longest blind mint in history.

Imagine the poetic amusement of the album being a lukewarm 6/10 after all this.