Wu-Tang Clan will only release one copy of their new album. They claim that, “similar to a Monet or a Degas, the price tag will be a multimillion-dollar figure.” Ilan Mochari ponders the strategy:
To the extent that fans are already discussing the album, the Wu-Tang Clan’s plan has already paid off in terms of marketing. What’s also fascinating–and potentially instructive, for businesses–is that the Wu-Tang Clan are also releasing an album through traditional means later this year. That album, called A Better Tomorrow, is scheduled for release this summer. What this means is that Wu-Tang will potentially be able to run an A/B test of sorts, with a control album (A Better Tomorrow) and a variable one (Once Upon a Time in Shaolin). Which release will generate more revenue? Which will fans like better? The group will find out and learn from it.
Felix Salmon isn’t on board:
[T]he contemporary art market is in the midst of an unprecedented bubble right now.
Different bubbles have different dynamics, but all of them are based, in one way or another, on price spirals. The general public needs to be able to see a given asset — tulips, dot-com stocks, houses, Richters, you name it — going up in price at an impressive clip. In order for any asset, or asset class, to become expensive, it first needs to start cheap, and work its way up. The Wu-Tang Clan not only want to create a whole new asset class; they also want that asset class to be valued at bubblicious levels right off the bat. Sorry, but markets don’t work that way.
Clyde Smith questions the comparison to visual art:
You can’t compare apples and oranges. The visual art market and the market for music are two different things. Both sell art but in different forms and with different histories. Such direct comparisons are meaningless though there’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from the way one market works and seeing how it applies in another market. That’s sometimes quite profitable.
But if you maintain that the value of music is defined by what it brings in the marketplace then you are the one devaluing music. Music is so deeply a part of human culture and existence, in fact music helps define such concepts, that if you can only state its value in terms of money then you are lost from the deeper realms you claim to represent.
Mike Jakeman thinks the real money will come from concerts:
Allusions to the Renaissance and its patrons suit an outfit like the Wu-Tang Clan, who has always run a neat line in self-mythologizing. But the one-copy concept is not as revolutionary as the group would like. Although the price paid for the album is likely to be in the millions of dollars, it will be dwarfed by what the group will earn from its planned listening events. With tickets priced at a similar point to a major art exhibition, the play-backs will attract hundreds of thousands of fans around the world and will generate many times the value of the single copy. This means that the group’s approach will fit in with the existing pattern of musicians relying on events for an ever-increasing proportion of their earnings.
The Dish 