Wu Tang to Sell Only One Copy of its New Album

[classical_hero]

Most groups make their money from touring, so I fail to see the point of this stunt. I'd have thought that getting your music to as many people as possible is the goal so more people go to your concerts.

 

[BvBPL]

If there is one copy of something, how many items are there?

One.

If you make one print of a woodcut or a silk screen or one cast from a mold then there is one copy. The fact that it is easily reproducible does not mean that the single copy loses any significance from being reproducible.

Here, the CD is a copy of the reel tape (or digital) master. The CD will be the sole copy in the intended medium. The master isn't the medium or the finished product, the CD is.

That's simply to address the semantic issue of a copy. I don't have the time at the moment to address your other points nor Angst's, but I will get to them soon.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Woodcut is great. Is the work of art that a woodcut represents present in the woodcut itself, or only in each impression you make from the woodcut?

If you owned the copper engraving for Durer's Melencolia, would you own a work of art? Or would you have to make an impression from it before you did?

 

[uppi]

So how long will it be until a copy is leaked on the internet?

The threat to search for recording devices sounds like a challenge.

 

[Azash]

By the way, don't worry too much about a dearth of Wu Tang. Their 20th anniversary album will drop later this year and I think they are making that album available to plebs like us.

RZA and INS are retiring, though.

They don't have an over-inflated opinion of themselves at all...

Over two decades as one of the most successful and loved projects in hip hop, they're certainly within rights to be frank about their own status.

 

[Darkflight]

I think pretentious is the right adjective to describe the Wu Tang Clan here.

Nice box though.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I think pretentious is the right adjective to describe the Wu Tang Clan here.

Indeed.

This is like somebody having the sceptre of an Egyptian king.

 

[Gori the Grey]

The threat to search for recording devices sounds like a challenge.

I hope they'll be very successful in preventing electronic recording devices.

I hope some rich guy will hire one guy who has an eidetic memory for music and another guy who has an eidetic memory for words to go listen and then have those two guys reconstruct the album from memory.

That way the leaking of the album will be a bigger feat than the form of release is a stunt. That's how scholars think some of Shakespeare's plays were pirated, memorial reconstruction.

If I was a rich guy, that's what I'd do, because, yes, part of what Wu Tang is doing in this is setting up a challenge to subvert their plan.

In a separate argument with BvBPL, I'm arguing that "copies gunna get themselves copied"; it's in the nature of the musical art to drive toward reduplication.

 

[Zelig]

People still buy albums? I can't imagine I'll ever do that again.

 

[BvBPL]

If you owned the copper engraving for Durer's Melencolia, would you own a work of art?

Only so far as the thing itself has artistic value. A chisel could be artistic, but Michelangelo's chisel isn't any more artistic than any other chisel despite being used to carve David.

A woodcut stamp or a die or a maybe a mold is probably more likely to be have artistic value than a chisel because those things are more likely aesthetic than a chisel.

 

[El_Machinae]

People still buy albums? I can't imagine I'll ever do that again.

No, I have some weird mental block where it feels like a waste of money. So, I have ridiculously little music compared to other people.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Only so far as the thing itself has artistic value.

Now I’ve caught you out. Now I know you’re just being obstinately recalcitrant to grant me my point. Anyone who wouldn’t give his left nut to own the copper engraving of Durer’s Melencolia, and think he’d got a priceless work of art in the bargain, has no business being an art critic or aesthetic theorist. No hiding in generalizations. Do you want Durer's copperplate or not?

You have seen, but don’t want to grant, the original point of mine that you'd questioned: that once one makes a copy, one has two copies of the thing in question. Yes, we sometimes call one the original or master, but the first copy has in effect made that, on another level, just another copy of the thing in question.

If I make a xerox of a document, I now have two copies of that document.

You work so hard to deny me this point, because you see where it is headed. Some artforms, like music, have their mode of existence and value in reduplication; some, like statuary, have their existence and value in uniqueness. Wu Tang are trying to make the one operate like the other. It won’t work. And they can't even bear the ramifications of trying to make it work; hence the hedge of the museum tour.

 

[Dell19]

People still buy albums? I can't imagine I'll ever do that again.

I like to still buy some albums as streaming services won't always have every song available. Plus at the moment streaming music is relatively cheap and there is lots of competition however that could easily change. I'm not a fan of buying individual songs.

On topic it seems unlikely that they will be able to stop someone from copying the album as lots of people at each museum and at the recording studio will have access. Plus presumably they might want to give copies to friends etc.

I wouldn't have much interest paying to listen to an album as a one off experience as I find it can take a few listens of album to really appreciate all the songs.

 

[Rashiminos]

I guess that they can do whatever they want, though the checking for recording devices just seems schizophrenic and unnatural.

I wouldn't say that. There's already enough people willing to record movie showings and the like. If I take spite into account, Wu Tang's contrived project seems guaranteed to have a few detractors brazen enough to undermine it.

 

[CavLancer]

Never mind

 

[BvBPL]

Anyone who wouldn’t give his left nut to own the copper engraving of Durer’s Melencolia, and think he’d got a priceless work of art in the bargain, has no business being an art critic or aesthetic theorist. No hiding in generalizations. Do you want Durer's copperplate or not?

Yes, but plates are the easy question. With some trying, I bet I could reproduce Melencolia with the plates.

I would also like Ansel Adams's negatives. However, those negatives are not the end works of art. I could not reproduce Adams's pictures because Adams used specific techniques to develop his negatives. With Adams's negatives all I would have is part of the making of the photographs, not the artistic end result.

The end result of the artistic process, the print, the photo, the CD, is the final piece of art. Those things generated along the way may have artistic value, but not necessarily and probably not to the same degree as the final result. The end result is more than the sum of its component parts.

That you are so hidebound to your ideas of what music should or should not be is demonstrative of how the Wu Tang album is novel. Fans will have different experiences interacting with this music then they normally do. Maybe the idea is loony, but that doesn't mean it isn't a means to change the interaction between musician and listener.

Some artforms, like music, have their mode of existence and value in reduplication; some, like statuary, have their existence and value in uniqueness.

Those are indefensible over generalizations. Live music is not reproducible. Even with the bootlegs running around, no one can reproduce the experience of the Dead playing at the Boston Garden May 7, 1977. Similarly, some forms of statuary are reproducible, as I've already shown.

All in all, I disagree with Wu Tang Clan, but not because I think music has lost its soul or something similar. I disagree with their very premise and the nature of the debate they're moving towards. This thing about some art's true heart being lost is nonsense. The nature of art simply changes, often with technology; there are so implicit understandings of the way we make, appreciate and analyze art in each and every one's specific category that these kinds of essentialist ways to articulate 'proper' art isn't really a meaningful endeavour.

I certainly agree that the nature of art, including music, is malleable. However, that means the artist can look back as well as looking forward. Simply because our general understanding of music is moving in one direction does not mean it necessarily must forever flow in that same direction.

Critics may contend that movement in one direction or another by an artist is good or bad, but they can't say that the movement is inherently invalid. To give an example, take perspective. Perspective in visual art has been with us for years and a painting without perspective will feel decidedly old-fashioned. If someone comes along and paints a contemporary painting without perspective we may say it is old-fashioned or even that it is bad, but we can't say that the artist's choice not to use perspective was per se invalid.

 

[BvBPL]

So Wu Tang sold Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to Martin Shkreli for two million dollars. Shrekli is the same League of Legends jerkoff who raised the price of Daraprim 5,500%.

Funny enough, there's a clause in the sales contract that entitles Wu Tang and Bill Murray to try and steal back the album.

 

[Narz]

Pretty stupid idea. Some creative person will find a way to steal it anyway. They are just fighting the tide but it won't make any impact.

 

[bhavv]

A very unique publicity stunt.

I don't think it has much to do with piracy, rather to try and get them media attention.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yeah, if one can't listen to the album, they'll still view is as crap or not crap after the first bootleg live comes out.