A Bad Idea To Begin With

As you may know there is a subset of performing artists who are deeply offended that in the age of the Internet traditional business models don’t work anymore. Digital replication is fairly easy, pervasive, and basically free.

I told you CDs were a bad idea, but did you listen? Noooo… That genie is out of the bottle.

Among the industries hardest hit is pornography (one can hardly conduct a search of any subject without “free, amateur” showing up) but the ones that whine the loudest are Music and Video. Sorry, even in the golden age of analog, “bootlegs” were widely available and openly sold.

The band that pretty much adapted the best was The Grateful Dead. Their primary source of income was ticket sales on their perpetual tour and they openly encouraged fans to record performances that were different, sometimes good and sometimes bad but different, every time they played.

Today performers dance lip synced to pre-recorded studio versions that are absolutely no different from the albums except that you are breathing the same air along with the rest of the sweaty bored crowd. I’ve stopped going to live shows for the most part except for my Soft White Underbelly (Blue Oyster Cult) homies who occasionally tour the local dives for ha-has.

Still, this is the new paradigm. If you want your band to make money, I mean your actual band and not a faceless media comglomerate like Sony (which isn’t even A United States company by the way), you tour and cash in at the gate and on the T-Shirts.

Now you may think I’m talking about Spotify and artists like Taylor Swift and Adele, but I’m actually talking about Wu Tang Clan.

They thought they had it licked. Not so much.

This Is Why You Don’t Sell the One Copy of Your Album for $2 Million
by Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic
11:10 AM ET

The news that Wu-Tang Clan had recorded an album of which there would only be one copy, sold for millions of dollars at auction, with the stipulation that it couldn’t be resold, has inspired debate for more than a year. Some people, like RZA, have argued that the plan is a radical statement on behalf of the value of music and the album format. Others have argued that it’s an insult to fans, a capitulation to traditional ideas about exclusivity and power that rap once railed against, and a demonstration of how capitalism can hurt art.

The debate is now settled. Wu-Tang has made a horrible mistake.

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin​ has been sold to Martin Shkreli, the 32-year-old pharmaceutical executive who triggered outrage worldwide earlier this year when his company increased the price of a drug used to treat some AIDS sufferers by 5000 percent—from $13.50 to $750 a tablet. He recently said he wished he’d raised it more. He appears to have bought this album in hopes of scoring dates, and for now, he does not seem interested in letting the public hear it.

The Bloomberg Businessweek article that broke the news of Shkreli’s winning bid​ quotes him as saying he has not yet listened to the album, even though the deal—for a rumored $2 million—closed months ago. He did delegate to an employee the task of confirming that all the songs were there. So why buy it? He said he made his final decision once the auction-house representative told him that doing so would give him “the opportunity to rub shoulders with celebrities and rappers who would want to hear it.”

For the record everything I write is copyrighted. It just is, I don’t even have to declare it, no sealed postmarked envelopes necessary. I don’t expect to make money from it and I don’t ask for any, it is love, art, and the love of art. I’m happy if you quote me, even at length though it’s nice if you credit me and even nicer when you tell me about it.