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Podcast Transcript

In 2015, the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan released an album that was unlike any other in the history of recorded music. 

It simultaneously set the record for the highest amount of money ever spent on a work of music, and it was the worst-selling album in history in terms of unit sales. 

The reason why it holds both of those distinctions is because only one copy of it was ever made. 

Learn more about Once Upon A Time in Shaolin, the literal one-of-a-kind album, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

If it seems odd that I’m doing an entire episode about an album released less than ten years ago, it is because this album is unlike any other. 

When I say this is an episode about an album, I mean that in the most literal sense. It is about an album, as in a single copy of a single album.

As you’ll soon see, this episode isn’t a review of the album. In fact, it’s all but impossible for anyone to review the album because so few people have ever actually heard it. 

For those of you who aren’t familiar, Wu Tang Clan was a hip hop group from New York that formed in 1992.  In fact, the term group might not even be the best way to describe them. They’ve been called a musical collective because they’ve had so many members and the members have often gone back and forth between performing as a group and solo efforts. 

The name of the group came from their love of Hong Kong Kung-Fu movies. In particular, the 1983 film Shaolin and Wu Tang.

The Wu-Tang Clan was a very successful and influential hip-hop act in the 1990s. 

Their inaugural 1993 album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) went triple platinum selling over three million copies. It is considered to be one fot he greatest hip hop albums of all time. Rolling Stone Magazine placed it #27 on their list of the top 500 albums of all time and many subsequent rappers have credited it as inspiration. 

They remained a popular act, but like almost every other musical act, over time their record sales waned. This was especially true in the age of music streaming when everyone’s record sales slumped because people just weren’t buying physical media anymore. 

Their second album, Wu Tang Forever was double platinum, and their third album The W went single platinum.

Their 4th album released in 2001 sold over 600,000 copies, their 5th album in 2007 sold around 200,000 copies, and their 6th studio album released in 2014 sold only about 60,000 copies. 

With sales of only 60,000 copies of their 2014 album A Better Tomorrow, the group faced some hard choices for their next album. Streaming had cut into album sales so much that the economics were no longer the same. 

Here, I want to digress a bit to explain how the traditional business of recording and selling an album worked. 

If an artist or a group was good enough, they might get signed to a record deal with a major recording label. The act would usually get a large lump sum advance. 

For the sake of making the math easy, lets assume that the artist gets an advance of $1 million dollars. 

This money is effectually a loan. It isn’t like a normal bank loan in that there is no collateral and if the album doesn’t sell then it doesn’t have to be paid back. 

However, depending on album sales, the artist might never see another penny. Everything the album makes and all of the expenses involved in promoting and marketing the album will be created towards the advance until it is paid off. It is only after that amount is recouped that the artist will get royalties on the album. 

The size of the advance will depend on the popularity of the act and the projection for album sales. 

Depending on the deal, an artist could be expected to pocket somewhere between 10 to 25% of the sale of each album sold. 

Streaming changed everything. People ended up spending less money on music because they were able to consume all the music they wanted for about $10 a month. 

Music consumption went up, but music spending went down. 

A popular artist once could expect to make millions of dollars for an album that went gold or platinum. 

Streaming changed everything. To give you an idea, the rapper Snoop Dogg recently revealed how much money he made from streaming. In 2023, he shared that he had recently had one billion streams of his music. 

How much money did he make off a billion streams? 

$45,000.

So, this was reality that was facing the members of Wu Tang Clan in 2015. Actually, this was the reality facing every musical artist over the last twenty years or so. 

The group could have just recorded another album and released it like they normally did.  Their previous album only sold 60,000 copies. Given the percentages they would make from declining CD sales and from streaming, they probably wouldn’t make a lot of money.

So, what they decided to do was totally genius and one of the greatest examples of thinking outside the box. 

For their next album, they were only going to make a single copy. 

To understand why this was a genius move, you need to understand some basic economics. In particular, you need to understand the demand curve. 

The demand curve makes up one-half of supply and demand. 

A demand curve is downward sloping. On a graph that has price on the vertical Y-axis, and quantity on the horizontal X-axis, the demand cuve says that the cheaper something gets, the more of it people will buy. 

That is pretty intuitive. The flip side of that is the supply curve, which is upward-sloping. It says that the more expensive something gets, the more of it will be made. 

Somewhere in the middle is an equilibrium point where supply will equal demand. 

However, whatever the price of something, there are some smaller number people who would buy it at a higher price than the equilibrium price. 

Let me give an example. When the movie Dune came out, I had been waiting for it for years. I couldn’t wait for it to hit the theaters. I was so excited to watch Dune that I probably would have paid much more for a ticket than what I paid. Maybe as much as $100, which is not far from the price of a Broadway ticket. 

However, I didn’t have to pay $100. I only paid about $15 at a matinee at my local theater. 

That difference between what I would have paid and what I did pay is called consumer surplus. 

A demand curve isn’t necessarily a straight line. Depending on the product at the extreme endpoint, it might go up dramatically. You might find people who would spend an exorbitant amount of money depending on the product.

This is what drives the art market. Paintings, wether modern or classics, are one of a kind items which are sold to the one person or consortium who values it the most. 

This is what the Wu-Tang Clan did. They completely changed their business model from that of a mass market album, a model that wasn’t performing well, to that of selling their album as an object of art. 

Their album, Once Upon A Time in Shaolin was to have only one copy. It was to be sold at auction to the highest bidder just like a piece of fine art. 

However, it wasn’t quite like selling a painting. 

The terms of the album’s sale included a peculiar legal stipulation: the buyer could not commercially exploit the album for 88 years, although they could play it at listening parties or potentially release it for free. This clause was intended to provoke discussion about the value and purpose of music in a digital age where piracy and streaming have changed how people access and value music.

That means you couldn’t buy the album and then turn around and sell it like a traditional album. 

Whoever the buyer was had to sell the album with the same stipulations and conditions until the year 2103, when the 88 years were up. 

Because the album was sold as a work of art, it was treated as such. 

Once Upon A Time in Shaolin is a two CD set. It is believed that there are 15 tracks on first disc and 16 on the second. At least one track features an appearance by Cher. 

The album is housed in an intricately carved box made of silver and nickel. The box was handcrafted by the British-Moroccan artist Yahya, whose work is known for its detailed craftsmanship and luxurious design. 

Accompanying the album is a 174-page leather-bound manuscript that includes lyrics, credits, stories behind each track, and philosophical musings. 

The masters of the recording were all destroyed, ensuring that the only copy of the album would be on compact discs themselves. 

With much fanfare, the album went up for auction in 2015. 

As this had never been done before, no one knew how much it would sell for. 

It ended up being sold for $2 million dollars, setting a record for the most expensive musical work in history. The group unquestionably made more money from the auction than they would have done through a traditional release, and they received far more attention than they would have as well.

Most of the money which was made on the sale ended up being donated to charity.

The person with the winning bid who took control of the album was someone that the Wu-Tang Clan didn’t expect: Martin Shkreli.

Shkreli was famous or perhaps infamous for his investments in pharmaceutical companies. He gained notoriety for purchasing the rights to a drug called Daraprim. Daraprim is used primarily to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can be dangerous for pregnant women and individuals with weakened immune systems, such as those with HIV/AIDS.

Overnight, he raised the price of the drug from $13.50 per tablet to $750, which made him a villain in the court of public opinion. 

In 2017, he put the album up for sale on eBay. Bidding got to $1 million dollars before it was taken down because, during the auction, he was put into federal prison for securities fraud. 

The United States government then seized the album to pay for the fines he owed. 

In 2021, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York announced that the album had been sold at auction.

The winner of the auction was a consortium called PleasrDAO. The winning bid was $4 million dollars.

PleasrDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization known for acquiring and managing digital assets using blockchain technology. They have been selling rights to the album as Non-fungible Tokens for $1 per share.  

In June 2024, the album was exhibited publicly at the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania. 

In July, it was revealed that Martin Shkreli had made copies of the album before it was seized. He reportedly made digital copies and had them stored in safe locations around the world. 

The current owners of the album took him to court to prevent him from owning or playing the music, and just days before the recording of this episode, a judge ordered him to surrender any and all digital copies that he had. 

Before I end the episode, I have to address one of the enduring legends about the album.

In 2015, a rumor began to circulate on Twitter that there was an unusual term in the contract that was associated with the album. The supposed terms that were circulated were as follows:

“The buying party also agrees that at any time during the stipulated 88-year period, the seller may legally plan and attempt to execute one (1) heist or caper to steal back Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, which, if successful, would return all ownership rights to the seller. Said heist or caper can only be undertaken by currently active members of the Wu-Tang Clan and/or actor Bill Murray, with no legal repercussions.”

This clause was never part of the legal agreement. However, one of the reasons why the rumor has persisted is because RZA, one of the leaders of the Wu-Tang Clan, has referenced Bill Murray and conducting a heist on social media. 

Once Upon A Time in Shaolin was a stroke of genius, even though almost no one has heard it or knows how good it is. By only creating one copy, the Wu-Tang Clan turned what would have been a run-of-the-mill album release into something we are still talking about years later.