PleasrDAO Releases Secret Wu-Tang Album

Transcript

welcome to bankless where we explore the frontier of cultural artifacts with deep mainstream lore being tokenized on ethereum ethereum enables the future of ownership and the music industry has slowly been losing the concept of user owned music ever since the rise of digitization and the internet today on bankless WE explore a story that began in 2014 with the wuang clan and that same story which continues to this day with the tokenization of a real world artifact on ethereum which is positioned to become the most owned but least listened to piece of music ever created bankless Nation the wuang clan formed in Staten Island New York in the early 1990s and is considered one of the greatest rap groups of all time whose

influence upon the world extends far beyond the music that they created the wuen clan is known for their raw gritty sound and the lyrical diversity from their 10 different members who also had their own independent careers on their own the routen clan grew in popularity along the rise of the increasing digitization commoditization and marginalization of music as an artistic form factor music as an art and unlike other forms of art that are out there truly suffered from the rise of digitization and the growth of the internet artists would pour their heart and soul into creating their music and then it could be copied relentlessly unstoppably eliminating the ability for the work of musical artists to discover a true market value for their work while picassos and Mona would go for Millions

musical artists became beholden to labels streaming companies streaming platforms and endless touring all because the digital form factor of their music was never able to achieve scarcity in the digital world in response to the Relentless digitization of Music the wuang clan recorded a secret album in 2014 and turned that album into a oneof one CD yes a compact disc for all you Zoomers out there and placed legal restrictions on its replicability and its commercialization no copy could be made no commercial extraction could be placed you could listen to it but you couldn't broadcast it and if you were to sell it you would no longer have it this oneof one album was meant to be a protest against value being stripped out of Music in the digital landscape the

decision was made to auction Once Upon a Time in Shaolin the name of this album to the high bitter with a stipulation that it could not be commercially exploited for 88 years ensuring its Rarity and exclusivity this album was purchased by the infamous Martin KY a pharmaceutical executive notorious for raising the price of a life-saving drug Darin by over 5,000% much to the dismay of Rizza and the rest of the wuen clan Martin won this auction for $2 million and became the owner of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin he reveled in the album's exclusivity even taunting wuang fans and the public by threatening to destroy it or keep it to himself indefinitely it was rumor that he loved the idea of giving a quick

death to what could have been a legendary story about a piece of art that that was trying to revitalize the idea of the ownership of music and he even went so far as to use the CD as a coaster on his desk to insult the art in itself scr has been called the most hated man in America and he was convicted of Securities fraud in 2016 and the United States government ordered him to Forfeit $7.4 million in assets this forfeiture included the unique wuang clam album Once Upon a Time in Shin because of Martin scr's greed the wuang album was given a new opportunity to find an owner who could appreciate the cultural artifact for what it was and leverage its power for good rather than defaming the name of ruang and teasing their dieh hard fans in July of

2021 it was announced that the album had been sold to an anonymous buyer in order to satisfy the forfeiture judgment against scy the buyer was later revealed to be a collective known as pleaser a decentralized autonomous organization known for purchasing high value digital and physical art pieces so enter pleaser an online community of crypto enthusiasts and internet culturalists who ripped the album from the hands of Martin scy and place it into a community of over a 100 Dow members intent on collecting parts of Internet lore jamus Johnson the chief pleasing officer of pleaser said this ultimate protest against middleman and rent Seekers of musicians and artists went South by going into the hands of Martin scly the ultimate internet villain pleas or doubt

wants this to be us bringing it back to the people we want fans to participate in this album at some level jamus described the purchase as appealing to to pleaser DA's interest in acquiring signature items of digital culture as well as a wider mission that it shares with many cryptocurrency champions prying artistic Creations from an exploitative Antiquated economic system and offering the promise of a fair one and bankless nation that is where we find ourselves today on this decade long story arc of the 2014 oneof one album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin but that is not the end of the story hopefully that was just a Prelude and you bankless nation in the fashion of web 3 have the opportunity to be a part of the future

of this artifact that has immense significance to many in the outside world not just for the fans of wuang but for the entire music industry as well bankless Nation believe me when I say that the entire music industry is watching this story that you just heard unfold as Once Upon a Time in Shaolin takes its next step into the world of web 3 and digital ownership as a token on ethereum and with that Preamble I'm going to hand things off to Leon cusac and Matt marov as soon as we talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible if you want a crypto trading experience backed by worldclass security and awardwinning support teams then head over to Kraken one of the longest standing and most secure crypto Platforms in the world Kraken is on a journey to build a more accessible inclusive and fair Financial

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to my left and Matt marov on the screen over in California Leighton Matt welcome to the show thank you for having us thank you good to be here Lon and Matt you guys are two leading members of pleaser Dow the organization that is tokenizing an album that is uh was not that was created before the word tokenizing was even a thing uh there's a bunch of backstory there's a bunch of lore that the bankless nation will have just listened to going into this episode so we're kind of entering into into the middle of the story but I want to start with why this album why what's special about this album that makes it a perfect fit to bring something that is real a physical CD into the digital online economy on ethereum wh why why do it why

is this the Perfect album Lon I'll start with you yeah well um the history of this album is that 10 years ago in 14 it was released as a one of one um album one of the first or certainly the most famous if not the first one of- one album ever created so there's only one physical copy that exists and the reason why this makes so much sense and why this is important to understand is because it wasn't just done that way for novelty purposes it was done that way as a protest against the devaluation of Music in a digital world basically the creators of this the wuang clan and the co-producer Civil Rings um were very frustrated with how in a digital world there's no ownership and in a digital world with no ownership no one values

music no one pays artists music musicians are not rewarded at all and so everyone just wants to listen to music for free and no one wants to actually pay artists and the their response that was to say okay if you're going to cut the artists out and not value their work and not pay for their work then we're going to make a oneon-one and only let one person listen to it which is how this whole Saga kicked off in 2014 and it's been a crazy it's only things have only gotten crazier since Matt why would you add to that yeah I mean I would just say that this this album is unique and is a oneof one but more than that it's an album that is easily viewed as a fine work of art yeah and the the question here is what has value and I think what R this all from

the beginning was this juxtoposition between hey I can go spend $50 million on this Monae and why is it that this work of art that comes from the exact same place that's arguably just as culturally significant isn't and so for me it all starts with the ability for this piece to be a representation onchain and offchain of value we in the in the crypto industry I think many of us became familiar with crypto thanks to the nft movement of 2021 yeah uh which uh made a lot of promises uh and made a had a lot of awareness brought a lot of awareness to crypto made a lot of promises especially in the world of art uh online art the digitization of art

like artist one of ones and one of the promises that the crypto industry made was new monetization models for artists specifically through nfts now we made a lot of promises we probably like wrote more checks and we could cash uh but I think with this story that's that is being manifested here with the wuang Clan album we are actually showing a way in uh being leading with an example of like how this might be relevant to artists yeah so is this just like a one-off scenario is this kind of just a cool story that's happening or is this are we trying to make this uh are we trying to carve a path here to show artists the way well I mean in my opinion we're trying to carve a path pleaser Dow is a digital physical collection we're a muse

and so it's not a question of we're not Hayden we're not Unis swap we're not going to create the rails for this but we can point the right direction with the art and so yeah absolutely I think there's a case to be made for this being a way forward and when you have Builders like Leighton willing to to lean in and actually pull it back from where things are and contemplate like how could this be useful how could there be value AC crel here I think you kind of have the next step in what comes yeah I think the thing I would add is like it's up to the people to decide at this point if this is a oneoff or if this is the new model um because right now there's been a lot of people over the past 10 years who have complained about not being able to

hear this album and the work has now been done where anyone in the world can buy an encrypted edition of this album for $1 and speed the release of this album and so now the ball is really in the court of the people right like like that's the art here and if the people are willing to say yes music has value and yes this this one-of-a-kind piece of artwork that the wuang clan created should be valued in the same way at least at minimum in the same way as like a painting by Monae right like there's a bunch of paintings by mon there's only a few albums there's only one one of one by the wuen clan why would that not actually be even more valuable and so I think whether or not this is a one-off art experiment or

whether this is a replicatable model for artists to use digital distribution that is ultimately what's going to be determined by how people interact with what's happening here and if people want to engage with it then yeah I think this going to that's going to get a lot of attention from a lot of artists who are going to say whoa this concept of digital ownership actually means something to me and actually um help solve the problem that the internet created because if you think about it for at least for musicians The Internet's been terrible like the internet has been not good like they've all they've all that's done is cannibalize all their money and so now we're saying okay maybe in a world with digital ownership on crypto rails some of that balance can be restored between the artists and the value their art I'd

like to go into that a little bit more so this album was created in 2015 14 which 2014 was when it was launching one of one album one of one before this idea of nfts when one of ones on ethereum were even a thing uh and can we talk about like some of the pressures that inspired the wuen clan to do this in the first place we have Spotify streams coming out we have the iTunes music story even before that we have YouTube music there's a lot of digital online platforms where people can go and listen to music these days that has really marginalized the ability for artists to become uh profitable as a result of their art can you and that that was in 2013 we've seen almost a decade year of maturation of that industry since then so what why why is this like so ripe for

the world of artists these days yeah I mean I think I think that's like an important thing you bring up because this whole Narrative of of trying to bring value back to music specifically in art is not something we invented it's a it's a it's a vision that we're trying to Steward that was very much the wuang Clan's vision from day one with this piece and so you I think Rizza has a great quote in one of the interviews he talks about where he's like people will spend $500 for a pair of headphones to listen to music but they won't be willing to spend 99 Cents for the songs that are coming through those headphones and like why is that and so um I think everything that they saw in 2013 or or uh yeah 2013 2014 sorry I'm getting my own dates confused 2014 when

they first released this all those Trends have only accelerated right like it's actually even worse for artists today than it was 10 years ago now and that's not and you that's why you see I think people in popular James Blake or there's a lot of artists talking about how streaming is so bad for them um but what's different what's different from 10 years ago is that we now have this concept of digital ownership and is that a solution to this problem we let's find out I think that's what we're saying but Matt COV yeah I don't know if you have an answer to that question as well I mean it's a nice it's a nice circular thing because the Dig concept of digital ownership is certainly what started this problem right the tech world and people that are kind of very similar to our own

ecosystem now discovered that if they got an early copy they could upload this onto parts of the web that were only accessible by certain others and all of a sudden you had every album ever coming out I mean just go back through the history of this and look at Eminem look at others talking about like whatever was always going to come out two months before we could launch it and so for Full Circle to be hey look now there are technological rails where not just the launching can exist but the tracking can exist the understanding of the ownership the royalty payment system um that to me is is perfect um I I think that you know look this is not only not ours on the

music side it's really not ours on the pleaser side either this is something that jamus saw very clearly when he went after this album that this would be the perfect album to have this kind of question asked and potentially answered and so I think that we're standing on the shoulders of a bunch of different individuals and getting the opportunity to ask a question mainly because the technology now exists to see what the answer is one of the uh the current stories about music is that the relationship between uh consumers of Music listeners of music fans of artists is mediated by Spotify right Spotify knows who the who the artists are and they know who the fans are but they don't allow for those

connections to be made directly and this is something that I think was also part of the the motivation to to make this album in the first place uh and now this is something that I think pleaser is is reintroducing here because right now this the the There's an opportunity for fans to own a part of this album maybe we can talk about the restoration of that relationship between the actual music and the owners and and consumers of that music yeah yeah because I think the thing you're you're picking up on just to like put a finer point on it is outside of sort of the economics of it another thing that that Rizza and silver rings wrote about when they released this was just how sad it is that people don't collect music anymore right you rent it from Spotify and if you stop

paying Spotify your whole thing's gone right you don't cherish it you don't collect it those are their words you know if you go to if you go to their artist statement and read it and so that is another component outside the economics the other component is us saying look collect this thing own it and that's why we had Hassan rahee who's a famous very famous designer in this world do the album art for this right and so you can actually price points aside let's try to bring that back and yes it is in a digital sense which is a little novel right because you're not collecting a physical object you're collecting a digital object so that's the novel piece of it but that is another core component here is is we're saying what does it look like to go back

to a world where we actually collected music and we didn't just have ai giving us the Spotify recommendation that we listen to for 30 seconds and then never hear again and then it's just In This Cloud right like what what does it actually look look like to go back to collecting and I think that's another that's another really important uh narrative I think you're picking up on Matt anything for you I don't have much more to to add to that um I think that's that's exactly right Len new projects are coming online to the mantle layer 2 every single week why is this happening maybe it's because mantle has been on the frontier of layer 2 design architecture since first started building mantle da powered by technology from igen da maybe it's because users are coming onto the mantle layer 2 to

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head over to cte's Grant application page to apply today and if you're not a developer those with staked ctsi can take part in the governance process and vote on whether or not a proposal should be funded make sure you're vote ready by staking your ctsi before the votes open well let's talk about the actual mechanics of of owning this thing so let's just drill down right into the actual details what's going on what's what's happening what are we doing here yeah well I mean so okay so let's start with it's it's everything about this album is interesting so let's let's start there so right now what is on offer to people is they are able to pay $1 wanted to start with the lowest price point possible to really bring this question to the Forefront of are you

willing to do anything for music are you willing to Value music in any way so they're willing they're paying $1 and what they get when they pay $1 is uh a token um that again this it's it's it's um it's an nft it's also it's also an erc20 so it's I'll get a little more technical for this audience because it's Bank list but what they're getting is this is this dual nature token that has this new original artwork designed by Hassan rahee um and also has the link to the fully encrypted album hosted on ipfs so there is an encrypted so uh I think one thing we might have missed is that no one very few people have listened to this album because it's not being reproduced right and so it's this album is is scarce in the fact that there's

one of one but it's also scarce than that you can't go find it on Spotify you can't go find it on the internet so this is the only this encrypted album is the only time that this album has been uploaded to the internet yes that's correct so the album was fully encrypted every song and so that's sort of like part of the part of the story here right is that you can actually become an owner of this music right you actually can access these encrypted files you can't obviously listen to it but you can become an owner of it so what you're doing is you're paying $1 and you're getting those things you're also the final thing you're getting is you are getting access to sampler from the album that was created specifically for this by the co-producer Civil Rings uh a five minute sampler where you can hear some

of the music okay so you can try before you buy try try after you buy after you buy try you can listen once you show that you value music and you care about this you can get some access okay now um the final thing that happens and this is where there's this interesting mechanic is the wuen clan originally decided that this album could not be released until 20113 okay okay so we used what does it mean to be released that was when they they were dictated that it could not be used in a way that's public okay outside of private listing party so they said the owners can have private listing parties but you cannot publicly share this with the world till 20113 no broadcasting no broadcasting no just no streaming no no public no public

performances no performances yeah all that stuff so again to honor this Vision we use that as the um as the decryption date for the music 2,13 but for each purchase one of $1 it takes 88 seconds off of that clock so it brings that it brings that closer now of course the passage of time also brings us closer to that right and so there's sort of this setup here where people can say if you actually value music and want to hear this right now you you can if you don't and you just want to stream your music on Spotify and you don't actually care about paying artists then that's fine the wuang clan was right Rizo was right civil Rings were were right and you can hear it when that

clock hits zero right and like let's let the people decide it's kind of like the put up or shut up because it's like how many people have been complaining for 10 years that like they shouldn't have done this they robbed the fans they they didn't let us hear it but then when it actually comes time to say are you willing to Value this as art and where are the people right right and there are and to be clear I guess we'll get into the econ we'll get into some of the sales and stuff there are people who are showing up saying yes time now the window so so I'm not trying to say no one's showing up but I am saying this is this is the question that the art is asking and and how are they going to show up right I think the question Rizza

didn't I don't think they just made this from an economic perspective I think they also wanted it to be treasured right and so by putting it into Mona we're having conversations now with other museums to take this on tour to allow the listening experience to be to be there I think is also a very important factor here because a lot of people have kind of pushed towards maybe we actually don't want the whole thing maybe we want to experience it kind of over here and I think that's the open question and so finding out the result of that is the fun part okay so the the rules according to the uh contract or contract of of the album is that there can't be any public dissemination of the album until 2130 or some very far in the future correct 2,13

yeah do why does please or doubt get the right to move forward that release date by 88 seconds every purchase what how did that how is that allowed yeah I I think without go going into this into the details I think it is true to say that we have been working with the original artists uhuh to be able to create a mechanism that people can at least have the option okay of unlocking this music earlier MH if they if they have if they have proven that they they so care to Value the music to do so this is not something that we are unilaterally doing this is something that we've done in collaboration with with the agreements uh created by the artists um with that said it is a very complicated piece of music from a legal perspective right and so um there's

there's there's a lot there that we can't we can't necessarily go into all the details let's just say though pleaser has worked its pleaser magic to to and put in a lot of and put in a lot of Blood Sweat and Tears to say to the the the world and to fans do we want to decide that as a society we can value music in the same way that we value every other type of art we value that and that's again that goes back to what Rizza said it's like you go you go to the museum you see paintings you see sculptures you see all these different things but you don't see recorded music right because we just as a society decided we don't really just put that in the same category and so or

because the reproduction mechanism was such that it could be stolen and not tracked which is kind of interesting because now you can actually put it out and track it digitally yeah yeah so unlike other art mediums music is so unique in the sense that it's extremely digital like there you can scan a piece of artwork but that never really is true to its original form of the artwork but that is true for music well and that so that gets into an interesting so in the digital world pre- ownership right and this is maybe super nerdy but with the crypto audience in mind let's maybe go into here in a digital world where there's no conception of like a public Ledger that defines provenance MH there is no difference between all these different copies of music right right

because you do have that with a painting right you sort of have the concept of the original right and then the the reproductions you don't actually have that with digital music pre blockchains right now you do now you have this onchain happening right now that the legal owner of this album is enabling you to buy a a a a a encrypted copy of it mhm and so you now have this for the first time and that's again that's us now saying okay in the 2014 the wuen clan was very preent to see ahead of the curve and and say what's happening to artists in a digital world is no one cares about their music no one pays them and it's getting completely devalued we

are going to protest that by making a oneof one that will never be digitized that was 10 years ago now we're saying okay 10 years later we have this new technology it enables provenance and ownership and collection to be experienced in a digital world is there now A Way Forward is there now a new way forward for this music can we now rethink this idea of digital content can we now rethink this idea and I don't know if we can to be honest but that's why it goes back to the people who are buying these these oneofone albums is like it's really going to be up to the consumers of this product and this product is the art yeah the product is the art maybe right I mean sometimes the first thing isn't the thing and that's why this is more a pointing in the

direction but there's a reason why the California DMV is putting things on chain right there's a reason why companies are actually using this as a backend because it's clear it's open it's obvious it's not centralized and so you know whether or not this is the exact mechanism or whether or not someone takes this and says oh wow there's some good things there let's build on it I'm not sure but super important to take the industry from kind of where it is to the next stage where it can interact with the rest of the world in a way that makes sense and and to my understanding you guys have been the members of the wuin clan are fully aware of of this process and are watching this happen uh what's it been like to to like work with them and kind of like pitch the idea of web 3 to them

well yeah I mean I want to start with the first part of that question sure so not just the members of the wuen clan are watching this the entire music industry is watching this the this this look this is the M tank CL this is this is this is like one of the most famous music groups of all time the number of people who are watching this and seeing is there actually something of substance of going on to crypto is there actually something of substance happening here that's not just some sort of Ponzi game that's not just a speculative thing that is actually people valuing ownership in a digital world there's a lot of eyes on this and yes maybe some of those eyes are quiet they're not commenting to the

New York Times and rolling stone but they're watching this and for me speaking from the perspective of being a member of the crypto Community right if we can show that there is something here and like what mov just said is this the perfect thing I highly doubt it but if we can show that there's something here I think that is going to have a massive impact and a ripple effect across artists across Distributors of music Across Digital streaming platforms across labels across the owner the copyright owners Etc like the the the opportunity here could not be bigger but um it's a little bit sad from my perspective because it's like the

opportunity could to be bigger but a lot of people in the crypto Community I think don't don't understand that full context and I think if they did they would be more excited about it so let's take the perspective of a crypto person who is very familiar with everything crypto maybe they're not familiar with the wuang clan or how big of a deal of a music group they are maybe they just don't like rap maybe they're not really as familiar with the the music industry most of this conversation is foreign to them but nonetheless they are here for the crypto movement and they believe in the power that crypto can bring the world why should they care about this I think it's the best chance you have at least this year calendar year I'll say I don't know how long I want to extend that timeline to show people outside of

crypto that digital ownership means something and that we can use that as a tool to bring value back to artists like I I can't think of a better a better opport a better opportunity to show them that I mean I'd have to comment this from the other direction because the reality is I'm I'm you know I'm in crypto since 2020 2021 I'm onboarded by jamus by pleaser for this purpose and then kind of started to spread my wings and really come to love the the industry um you know my prior jobs have all involved building structure Around Talent and so when I came on and saw this to me this was just a obvious aha moment like why in the world aren't

people getting outside of the casino and onboarding and so from a from a web 2 perspective um this is this is super interesting and I think that we have a real opportunity here to show why pleaser really is kind of the 92 dream team of of crypto right and to bring to bear kind of the the resources and the knowledge and the understanding and connect these worlds and and like Leon said whether or not this be becomes the Paradigm by which these launches occur I'm I'm not sure but I can guarantee you that a lot of thought's going to be given to what we did here and the love that went into it because it's not value extractive it's a way that you can launch something in our world and create a community give back and also have

something transparent and trackable without saying oh here you go be a part of the casino um there's a part of that I think that can be fun for some but it's not the entire thesis I have a memory I like to share before we we wrap up and give some call to actions uh 2021 nft NC uh was one of the first times that I met a lot of the members of pleaser Dow uh and also just a lot of people in in crypto at all because we were coming out of covid uh and there was a wuang the pleaser Dow had just bought the album Maybe This was 2022 pleaser Dow had just brought 20221 pleaser da had just bought the album and we were doing a listening party in in Brooklyn New York uh and

it's where I think I met Hayden for the first time it's where Leighton and I had met in 2019 and we had a listening party of like maybe 30 people uh in in Brooklyn listening to the album uh and I some of the songs I remember to this day is like oh man I don't really like rap but this song is awesome uh and it's just one of the Fondest Memories that I have and I definit it definitely came from the whole experience of like just the hair sing on end of listening to an album that you know that a very small number of people had been able to be a part of and the the story here is that that now everyone can share a very small part of that a part of experience yeah no I think it's it's the most exclusive piece of music ever to exist only owned

by one person can now be owned by anyone for a dollar in an encrypted format right like that's that's that that's and so there is like this really interesting play here where we have democratized ownership of this asset now listening is still happens in these different modularities right like right now it's at the Mona Museum in Tasmania that's where you can hear 30 minutes of it you can hear 5 minutes of it online after you purchase you can you can go pirate it on YouTube and listen to five minutes of it if you want to um and so like there's but but the point is the point is ownership of this piece of of of this this art is not something anyone

can participate in right and there's going to be continuing the way that people can experience it and listen to it is going to continue to be rolled out and and it will be continue in different modalities like it will continue to be somewhat some of it online some of it streaming some of it will continue to be in museums and um other our institutions and David I mean I think you really zero in on it um for a big part of this I mean I I grew up on woo I grew up listening to them um 36 Chambers sure but Ray and only Bill for Cuban links ghost and Iron Man um some of my my favorite music of all time and the reason why you say what you say is the same reason why I can appreciate

the Rolling Stones but not necessarily know every song Because great music is just great music and outside of everything else this is just great music it is it is great music I I've had the chance to listen to some of it and I it's it's amazing it's beautiful yeah it's I I definitely am am very partial to the song with the uh the trumpets the brass I think that's track four don't know the name of it I don't know are there are there names to these songs there are there are names yeah there are names um and that track is one of my favorites as well all right guys uh if people are peaked either because they absolutely love the wuang clan and they want to own a part of this or because they think that this is a great example

to help promote the values of crypto to outside Industries and outside players who like Leon said are definitely watching uh what should they go do how can they help yeah so you can go to the album.com the album.com the album.com I know what a great URL I think it's the best branding here a lot of work went into creating not yes you can you can mint this digital artifact but there's a lot more to that website you can uh interact with like a 3D version of the box you can listen obviously to this sampler produced by uh silver rings you can look at the leaderboard where you can see like who's who's doing the most to unlock this album um the other thing I'd really highlight for the crypto audience is that if you click byy album when you go to the album.com you can

click over to Apple pay and there's a very very very simple like purchase flow with Apple pay and so this is something that you can send to anyone they don't need to set up a wallet they don't need to deal with crypto at all they but there is a wallet there power powered by privy um there's there is an there is an embedded wallet that's created based on their phone number okay so there is something there yes but like the user experience of it is not that you have to create a wallet and so it's really magical I would really encourage people to give it a try and it's something that you can send your family look again it's like $1 and we wanted to make it accessible to people because we really wanted to take this from like the most exclusive owned object in the whole

world and use crypto to make it the most widely owned piece of music in the whole world and to really play into this question I not going to say answer it but play into this question that Rizza and silver rings asked in 2014 about what does it mean to own something digitally and what does it mean to value and collect music and like this is this is this is the way you can do that do that today and again it's like it's not um it's not a lot of money yeah I do think answering that question would be interesting but asking that question in bigger and bigger form factors I think also kind of serves that same purpose uh and I think that's really what ethereum and online digital property rights also brings to the table is what does it really mean to own something right and

so just making uh maybe asking the question but bigger and louder is also kind of part of the original inspiration of this whole story yep uh so so the sale has been live for I think a week now um so we are already getting some data about like how well this is going how well how well is it going yeah well I'll let I'll let matov add some color from the music side but I think one thing that's really interesting so far is that of the of the mints we've already had I think 45 50,000 mints 4 between 45 and 50,000 mints are happening with people using credit card okay 45,000 mints just with the credit card not with the crypto side of just with credit card and so what we're seeing is the levels of Engagement with people using credit card not using crypto are off the charts like thousands

of unique people buying it 45,000 or so unique mints I think maybe 50,000 unique mints and so I think that's an example now on the flip side the engagement of the crypto side I would say has been relatively like tepid like there it has been engagement but it's not not not like you know what you would see with Constitution da or something like that right so it's it's been very interesting to work on something that has a lot of relevance to culture but is less relevant inside the crypto native bubble um obviously we hope to ultimately reach both both people and and have a message that's for both of them but matov I think you've looked into some of the stats in terms of how how where this puts where this puts things in terms of normal album

sales yeah and I mean I think the Constitution di is actually an interesting example because I'm pretty sure that trickled in before there was a couple much larger um injections before it took out took off I think that in 2024 though right now um I want to say Ariana was at 240 for yes and as a single um red drum was at5 I mean at 250 right now where people are acquiring the ability to have this have this piece of art along with the ability to stream a sampler I think that we've probably broken or about to break some first week um song Single record high level like 250,000 I think is a total mint so far we're about six days in and I think it's come from around

15,000 unique mentors and again a very large portion of that being people who do not use crypto who are using a credit card and who presumably don't have a wallet right and who heard about this probably from non- crypto channels as well yes who heard about it from Hip Hop and and and larger you know New York Times type Publications yeah so just to do the math 250,000 mens times 88 seconds y 250,000 times 88 seconds we're getting close to a year we're getting close to one year so we have pulled forward the release date by one year and this has been out for a week or so yeah and and we we have a hundred years to go no not quite a 100 I think I think it's like 70 77 years is like the total is the total but it's not going to be a

complet binary right so it's not like it has to get to zero for for music to release people people can expect that as people become owners and value music the music comes out and of course on the on the flip side if if people uh if people don't and they just want to wait then the music will come out too right um we might be dead just much later it just might be it just might be later um but yeah I mean to be honest like you know the amount of time we the whole the the eyes and the ears of a very important section of the music industry are on crypto right now right and most people in crypto I think are totally unaware of that but that is the reality and um yeah

I think this is a really interesting opportunity and we'll see we can't dictate what people want to do but I think we can create a really unique opportunity if people want to engage with it Leon Matt thank you guys so much for coming on the show and and helping me explain this to the bankl nation today thank you thank you for having us there Bank Nation you guys know the deal is risky defi is risky uh is owning music risky I don't know I'll let that be a question for the listener but we are on the on the journey West it's not for everyone but we are glad you with us on the Bengal Journey thanks a lot