Keep An Eye On...

[Cilvaringz]

"So essentially, you are fine with PleasrDOA basically releasing the album this way as long as it respects the integrity of the album itself, aka treating the album as an artistic statement."

I would not have done this way no. I thought the clock counter was a clever play, but the numbers didn't make sense. I do however respect that everything is trial and error. But I am for the album as an artistic statement. That was my original concept, not Pleasr's. They just attempted to extend it in their own way.

[ShaolinArtStudent]

"So essentially, you are fine with PleasrDOA basically releasing the album this way as long as it respects the integrity of the album itself, aka treating the album as an artistic statement."

I would not have done this way no. I thought the clock counter was a clever play, but the numbers didn't make sense. I do however respect that everything is trial and error. But I am for the album as an artistic statement. That was my original concept, not Pleasr's. They just attempted to extend it in their own way.

The way the whole countdown has to go down is a bit frustrating, but they seem to imply it's not the only way to do so. So who really knows.

I'll give PleasrDOA credit that unlike Martin, they're treating the album like an art piece and seem to be earnest about people hearing the record.

In comparison to Martin who used it as a coaster, a weed plate, breaking the $2 Mil. case and reacting so indifferent to it, and god knows what else he did to OUATIS.

[Cilvaringz]

Yes, Martin made it notorious and legendary. Pleasr tries to respect the artform and artists and cross bridge it into a world they know. Who knows where this well end up at. It's got a life of its own at this point.

[ShaolinArtStudent]

My big question now is this: if this is the way they're doing it so that the Wu-Tang Clan can get paid and such, would that also include people like Killah Sin, Cher, you, and the people who made the CD cases?

[ForensikZ]

Forget the 28M figure for a second. And to be clear, RZA and I had nothing to do with this roll out. We were told they were going to try something and there were issues to clear with RZA and Divine, but we weren't in on any planning or consulting or anything. I found out about Tasmania in the news. NY was last minute. And I still only half understand why the roll out was done this way and how the numbers were put together. Re: the 88 void, I had already told them I was happy to void it if RZA and Divine were and there was a win-win for the Clan and everyone. But I wasn't and am not privy to those convos between them.

But wherever it stands, there's two other numbers to look at. The first number is what it cost to make this record. Due to an NDA I can't tell you how much exactly but I can say it's very, very expensive. I think we all know that certain Clan members have been vocal about their payments not reflecting standard record label commissioned project fees. So we have OUATIS which was done with a smaller budget than what would usually be standard, it has had 10 years of press you couldn't buy or dream of, everybody and their grandmother has heard about this project and a hugely built anticipation.

Now lets take the results of the Pleasr rollout and factor in the debatable holes such as the crypto angle most of us don't understand (me included), extreme low price for a piece of the music, the sales announcement being drowned in three previous news cycles (Shkreli lawsuit, Tasmania, NY) all close together, no clear communication on what's being sold and obviously a seemingly impossible and fairly off-putting goal to achieve of 28M sales before the record's released (or half even).

But for the sake of argument, lets say it all was well communicated and clear, 13000 unique buyers each paid 10.99 for the record and $143.000 was made. Or maybe it's so special they'd all pay $100 for the record and the turnover was 1.300.000 USD.

I can tell you right now that 1.3M would not cover the expenses of an album like OUATIS the way it was produced. Let alone if it was done in a way where everybody did get paid a record label commissioned fee. A Better Tomorrow has roughly 40M streams. That's $160.000 at best. That's an album the Clan (though reluctantly at times) promoted officially. The Saga Continues, not an official Wu-Tang Clan album, did better at roughly 88M streams. That's $352.000 at best (best, being a $4000 per 1 million streams ratio). You can add some imaginable income from collectable vinyl and CDs and miscellaneous revenue.

Point I'm making, is that to make OUATIS an economically viable project (just to breakeven) it carried more value being a single copy, then it seems to do as a potentially public copy after 10 years of press, legend and notoriety. It might be too early to tell, but a momentum doesn't last long in todays world. And if they had charged 10x or even 100x as much, do you think the unique buyers would be more, less or the same?

Pleasr is in it for more than 5M. To break-even the conventional way you're looking at a minimal of 2 Billion streams by prime Spotify accounts in prime countries with high pay out ratios per 1M streams. Their biggest album 36 is at roughly 1.2 Billion streams. You'd need double that. Only 12000 unique people have bought the Pleasr token, with some buying as many as 12000 copies at once. Two crowd funding efforts back in 2014 raised $ 11000 and $ 18000 respectively.

Given all this, the numbers either don't add up or are high unlikely at this point. Anything might change. But for now I'd say, that it might be fair to conclude that an album of this kind by this artist in this day and age as a publicaly available product simply isn't economically viable or extremely risky. But as a single unit, it's shown the opposite. 5000 people are on the waiting list in Australia. NY was sold out in 3 seconds. Small venues and small numbers yes. But the Clan sells out huge capacity venues now.

So can the album do better as an artwork then as a puclicly accessible standard album? Has The Clan, like the Stones and other similar legendary artists, simply become culturally more valuable than they are on new recorded work?

I thought so in 2014, I think so now.

What do yall think?

I get it brother. I dont mean to make you type up a whole explanation.

i understajd the plan for this. I dont mind it in essence. The museum thing is still going on. We gotta give it time. I appreciate you even talking to us about it. You dont have to. Im not in anyway displeased with the whole affair. Ill check it on its swing back through america. I think the whole things cool and i understand the worth of NOT dropping it as much as inwanna hear it.

i agree with you on that level. I like that its moving around the world at the very least. At the very least theres that. And id 100% be down to check ot when it came back to nyc.

[ShaolinArtStudent]

That being said, it does seem like PleasrDOA is, like I mentioned above, genuine about releasing the album to the public. I just wanna know how they will do it, They seem to hint that simply buying the album through either hard money or crypto isn't the only way.

This definitely doesn't feel like how Martin boasted how he was going to "release the album" when Trump became president only to then play just snippets and that's it.

I'm actually rather surprised everyone here seems optimistic, if a bit off put by Pleasr's way of doing this. I tried to be in the same vein on the Wu-Tang subreddit only to be shot down because those people reaaally are just dismissive.

Shame.

[Goldenchild]

Use Apple Pay or a credit card and hey will create your “Wallet” that contains your “Album” it is all tied to SMS/Cell phone number for authentication.

Really, they made it as easy as possible when it comes to Crypto.

Cool. I finally figured it out. Bought one copy and got a sampler, but I'd already heard it.

And the disrespectful shit Martin Shkreli did with the album doesn't get talked about enough. Of all the people RZA and Cilva could've sold the album to, they picked one of the worst people. He treated the album like it was a piece of garbage. That still pisses me off

[David Daniel Davis]

Martin Shkreli probably had sex with the hole in the c.d. and jacked off to the Clan pictures in the booklet and now the pages are stuck together. Let's face it, Once Upon A Time In Shaolin is ruined.

[ShaolinArtStudent]

Martin Shkreli probably had sex with the hole in the c.d. and jacked off to the Clan pictures in the booklet and now the pages are stuck together. Let's face it, Once Upon A Time In Shaolin is ruined.

you chose to type this, why-

[David Daniel Davis]

Because that is probably what happened. Just look at him, what broads are sliding up and down on his wood at night?? He looks like if Michael and Janet amalgamated into a singular organism..

[Shaolinmonk]

Forget the 28M figure for a second. And to be clear, RZA and I had nothing to do with this roll out. We were told they were going to try something and there were issues to clear with RZA and Divine, but we weren't in on any planning or consulting or anything. I found out about Tasmania in the news. NY was last minute. And I still only half understand why the roll out was done this way and how the numbers were put together. Re: the 88 void, I had already told them I was happy to void it if RZA and Divine were and there was a win-win for the Clan and everyone. But I wasn't and am not privy to those convos between them.

But wherever it stands, there's two other numbers to look at. The first number is what it cost to make this record. Due to an NDA I can't tell you how much exactly but I can say it's very, very expensive. I think we all know that certain Clan members have been vocal about their payments not reflecting standard record label commissioned project fees. So we have OUATIS which was done with a smaller budget than what would usually be standard, it has had 10 years of press you couldn't buy or dream of, everybody and their grandmother has heard about this project and a hugely built anticipation.

Now lets take the results of the Pleasr rollout and factor in the debatable holes such as the crypto angle most of us don't understand (me included), extreme low price for a piece of the music, the sales announcement being drowned in three previous news cycles (Shkreli lawsuit, Tasmania, NY) all close together, no clear communication on what's being sold and obviously a seemingly impossible and fairly off-putting goal to achieve of 28M sales before the record's released (or half even).

But for the sake of argument, lets say it all was well communicated and clear, 13000 unique buyers each paid 10.99 for the record and $143.000 was made. Or maybe it's so special they'd all pay $100 for the record and the turnover was 1.300.000 USD.

I can tell you right now that 1.3M would not cover the expenses of an album like OUATIS the way it was produced. Let alone if it was done in a way where everybody did get paid a record label commissioned fee. A Better Tomorrow has roughly 40M streams. That's $160.000 at best. That's an album the Clan (though reluctantly at times) promoted officially. The Saga Continues, not an official Wu-Tang Clan album, did better at roughly 88M streams. That's $352.000 at best (best, being a $4000 per 1 million streams ratio). You can add some imaginable income from collectable vinyl and CDs and miscellaneous revenue.

Point I'm making, is that to make OUATIS an economically viable project (just to breakeven) it carried more value being a single copy, then it seems to do as a potentially public copy after 10 years of press, legend and notoriety. It might be too early to tell, but a momentum doesn't last long in todays world. And if they had charged 10x or even 100x as much, do you think the unique buyers would be more, less or the same?

Pleasr is in it for more than 5M. To break-even the conventional way you're looking at a minimal of 2 Billion streams by prime Spotify accounts in prime countries with high pay out ratios per 1M streams. Their biggest album 36 is at roughly 1.2 Billion streams. You'd need double that. Only 12000 unique people have bought the Pleasr token, with some buying as many as 12000 copies at once. Two crowd funding efforts back in 2014 raised $ 11000 and $ 18000 respectively.

Given all this, the numbers either don't add up or are high unlikely at this point. Anything might change. But for now I'd say, that it might be fair to conclude that an album of this kind by this artist in this day and age as a publicaly available product simply isn't economically viable or extremely risky. But as a single unit, it's shown the opposite. 5000 people are on the waiting list in Australia. NY was sold out in 3 seconds. Small venues and small numbers yes. But the Clan sells out huge capacity venues now.

So can the album do better as an artwork then as a puclicly accessible standard album? Has The Clan, like the Stones and other similar legendary artists, simply become culturally more valuable than they are on new recorded work?

I thought so in 2014, I think so now.

What do yall think?

See this is the type of openness and clarity I appreciate. I really hope it wasn't RZA and or Divine who refused to void the 88 years for reasons like "it's art and would defeat the purpose of the album" or something along those lines. Anyway, that even you do not know if they are going to release the whole thing is worrisome. I don't get it, didn't they buy the original copy at once at double the freaking price already? How can they not own the rights yet?

As far as your involvement and the marketing, promotion side. Sounds like it's quite a mess, but a good sign those listening events were sold out quickly. And I think nobody here is denying the status of Wu-Tang. However I do think you are overestimating the value of this album, the notoriety it has gathered and people's knowledge of it. I'd be willing to bet outside of some people in NYC and other places, if you ask them about Wu-Tang they have heard of them, know them and or could even be serious fans, but this album I don't think many would even know of. And if they do, it's one that they don't view positivitely. You might not see it as a giant circus, but to even a fan like myself it's far from a positive thing.

You mentioned in another post that Martin contributed to this in a positive way in particular and I commend you for being positive, even if for the sake of not getting sucked into our negativity which I'm sure is annoying and can be hard, but you cannot tell me that the whole charade of him playing songs on YT shortly after he owned it, what type of person he turned out to be (shown in videos to be very careless with the disc and such) was a good thing. The best thing to happen was for that album to be taken from him!

So your involvement is very little, that's good to know. So can you put to rest the whole remastering thing PleasrDAO claims you are doing / have done? And remixing songs is definitely not happening then? Could the rights to the tracks be a typo and just mean they are clearing the songs, samples wise and to get agreements with each artist involved to sign off on this being released as it is. Thus, it requires contracts with a x amount of royalties for example. That would explain the way they are doing this perfectly and wouldn't be such a bad thing. I just appreciate transparency, since this whole thing has been shrouded in mystery.

Thanks for anything you can answer and share with us.

[jaydee3]

Forget the 28M figure for a second. And to be clear, RZA and I had nothing to do with this roll out. We were told they were going to try something and there were issues to clear with RZA and Divine, but we weren't in on any planning or consulting or anything. I found out about Tasmania in the news. NY was last minute. And I still only half understand why the roll out was done this way and how the numbers were put together. Re: the 88 void, I had already told them I was happy to void it if RZA and Divine were and there was a win-win for the Clan and everyone. But I wasn't and am not privy to those convos between them.

But wherever it stands, there's two other numbers to look at. The first number is what it cost to make this record. Due to an NDA I can't tell you how much exactly but I can say it's very, very expensive. I think we all know that certain Clan members have been vocal about their payments not reflecting standard record label commissioned project fees. So we have OUATIS which was done with a smaller budget than what would usually be standard, it has had 10 years of press you couldn't buy or dream of, everybody and their grandmother has heard about this project and a hugely built anticipation.

Now lets take the results of the Pleasr rollout and factor in the debatable holes such as the crypto angle most of us don't understand (me included), extreme low price for a piece of the music, the sales announcement being drowned in three previous news cycles (Shkreli lawsuit, Tasmania, NY) all close together, no clear communication on what's being sold and obviously a seemingly impossible and fairly off-putting goal to achieve of 28M sales before the record's released (or half even).

But for the sake of argument, lets say it all was well communicated and clear, 13000 unique buyers each paid 10.99 for the record and $143.000 was made. Or maybe it's so special they'd all pay $100 for the record and the turnover was 1.300.000 USD.

I can tell you right now that 1.3M would not cover the expenses of an album like OUATIS the way it was produced. Let alone if it was done in a way where everybody did get paid a record label commissioned fee. A Better Tomorrow has roughly 40M streams. That's $160.000 at best. That's an album the Clan (though reluctantly at times) promoted officially. The Saga Continues, not an official Wu-Tang Clan album, did better at roughly 88M streams. That's $352.000 at best (best, being a $4000 per 1 million streams ratio). You can add some imaginable income from collectable vinyl and CDs and miscellaneous revenue.

Point I'm making, is that to make OUATIS an economically viable project (just to breakeven) it carried more value being a single copy, then it seems to do as a potentially public copy after 10 years of press, legend and notoriety. It might be too early to tell, but a momentum doesn't last long in todays world. And if they had charged 10x or even 100x as much, do you think the unique buyers would be more, less or the same?

Pleasr is in it for more than 5M. To break-even the conventional way you're looking at a minimal of 2 Billion streams by prime Spotify accounts in prime countries with high pay out ratios per 1M streams. Their biggest album 36 is at roughly 1.2 Billion streams. You'd need double that. Only 12000 unique people have bought the Pleasr token, with some buying as many as 12000 copies at once. Two crowd funding efforts back in 2014 raised $ 11000 and $ 18000 respectively.

Given all this, the numbers either don't add up or are high unlikely at this point. Anything might change. But for now I'd say, that it might be fair to conclude that an album of this kind by this artist in this day and age as a publicaly available product simply isn't economically viable or extremely risky. But as a single unit, it's shown the opposite. 5000 people are on the waiting list in Australia. NY was sold out in 3 seconds. Small venues and small numbers yes. But the Clan sells out huge capacity venues now.

So can the album do better as an artwork then as a puclicly accessible standard album? Has The Clan, like the Stones and other similar legendary artists, simply become culturally more valuable than they are on new recorded work?

I thought so in 2014, I think so now.

What do yall think?

Thanks for sharing. It sheds some light on whats happening. I knew wu tang clans hey days are sadly a bit over.

Not to say that new banger projects might come like the rumored cuban linx 3 or supreme clientelle 2.

U god and rzas album can be super dope and what shoulve been he debut. (Rzas involvement in it was sad and the tracks felt out of place sonicly for me atleast.

I agree on your point that wu still have the cult status for who they are.

Its a new generstion now who loves music that honestly is mostly what I call fastfood music. Generic garbage beats anyone with some musical knowledge could produce in 10 15 minutes.

Texts that is laughable and so watered down it sounds like the first rhyme i wrote down at the age of 10.

I kind of understand what plsrdao are trying to do but if they arenot careful this whole thing might blow up in their face. I just read today the first airdrop involving gamestop just to have gamestop say they dont have anything to do with plsrdao.

Also alot of people dont seem to understand what they are doing but I do think they are trying to get things cleared for release. Even though it starts to look like a shit show.

They honestly should make a statement so people dont belive they just bought a 5 min sampler that is not considered a single. ( Sorry Cilvaringz but a spade is a spade. Even though if it was a single as a release it probably would blow up huge.)

Alot of people start to say that plsrdao is just grifters by this point. Im not one of them though.

This 88 clause is just dumb now honestly. Best case scenario it would be a art piece at a museum somewhere at that time.
I mean i dont know who would buy and enjoy a unreleased album by Ella Fitzgerald today.

I did invest though and gave up 15$ since i feel its what a album costed in the middle 90's maybe my kids will enjoy it if I wont get to hear it.

All above is just my opinion at this point with the information I have.

Peace to the middle east.

Adding new info from plsrdaos x account. They did kinda a statement.

@depressivehacks

And it's totally above board to release the album once that timer hits zero, despite the legal restrictions placed on the album at the time it was created?

@PleasrDAO
Yes, we purchased the commercial rights separately

@depressivehacks

Okay so you're now in complete control of when the album is released, no restrictions? You could release it today if you so chose to?

@PleasrDAO

No, many of the tracks still need to be cleared which is an expensive and complex process.

So I guess patience people.

[David Daniel Davis]

Sample clearance is surely going to fuck this up.. That means EVERYBODY involved would have to be willing to play ball or else the whole shit is over.. That is why Eminem can never officially rerelease Infinite even with all of his millions, because every sampled artist has to give the go ahead..

[ShaolinArtStudent]

Sample clearance is surely going to fuck this up.. That means EVERYBODY involved would have to be willing to play ball or else the whole shit is over.. That is why Eminem can never officially rerelease Infinite even with all of his millions, because every sampled artist has to give the go ahead..

Kind of wished they had cleared that up first before the teasing. Plus the fact they're doing the air drop stuff, which apparently will bring the countdown lower as well, it might as well backfire more.

[Goldenchild]

Sample clearing is still confusing to me. A producer makes a beat and gives it to a rapper…so who pays for the sample clearance, the producer or rapper? At which stage do you clear the sample? It seems goofy to make a beat before clearing the sample