A record label is like a basketball team with a coach and a system to help the players flourish. The few that do need a label to hone their talent and market them to the masses. With that said, the fact is that most artists don’t shine. Music is content, and content is hit-driven. Now I don’t think every artist should establish a DAO, not even in today’s crypto-humid climate. (The cast of Friends are living off their royalties to this day, despite most of them not working for years.) Hate it or love it: DAO is not for everyone Given that hit songs are evergreen, I’ll be getting money as long as 50’s music is played and shows keep getting watched. Looking at the financial side, if returns keep coming to me from all the wins of 50’s projects, it becomes an income stream that I can count on, like dividends paid from a company. Like with NFTs, there is a cache to holding tokens. The token would validate that I was there from the start. Dre.Īs someone who felt he discovered 50 Cent before the mainstream, I’d be committed to the DAO and never sell the token. 50 could have become the first hip-hop billionaire, a decade before Dr. His deal with Vitaminwater netted him $100M after Coca-Cola bought the company. Considering the vast array of ventures 50 was involved in, and how popular and successful he was at the time, we’re talking hundreds of millions. How much would the fully diluted valuation (FDV) of the G-Unit DAO be worth? It’s hard to imagine. He would have reduced risks with the community. And because 50 had a supportive community, he could first test ideas with DAO members through proposals and votes to see what resonates. And the fans, like myself, who joined the DAO by purchasing the $G-Unit token would be getting profits from everything.
His TV show Power and BMF would be financed by the DAO.
G-Unit clothing and sneakers would be part of the mix too. Next, his entire roster of artists 50 chaperoned would have their albums released through the DAO Lloyd Banks and The Game sold millions of albums. If I was willing to order his mixtapes online, don’t you think I would have purchased the $G-Unit token with the promise of getting the inevitable album and a share of all future earnings? 50 Cent could have raised $20 million through a G-Unit DAO and used the money to hire the same producers his record label had. Dropping a DAO and the $G-Unit tokenįorget about getting $1 million as an advance and owing several albums to a label. Now let’s imagine how a DAO approach would have looked like for 50 and his crew, his artist roster, and of course, the fans. Later, when a vote is passed to sell a specific item, the returns are distributed between the DAO’s token holders. Members will propose which NFT items or collection they want to buy, vote on every proposal, and those that are green lighted, the DAO moves ahead and acquires. It’s similar to venture capital funds, but “wider” and more democratic members of the DAO get to vote on how the funds are deployed based on what brought the community together in the first place.Īnd, as is the case with crypto, everything is transparent and executed by computer programs.Īs an example, let’s take an imaginary NFT DAO. Over time, the value of the token should increase based on the returns it generates. In simpler terms, it’s a community that pools their crypto together to deploy it for a certain project or cause.įor pooling their money, community members get a token that represents the DAO. What is DAO and why it’s on fire right nowĪ DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization. How does all this relate to crypto? Well, I believe that if 50 Cent broke out now, he would establish a G-Unit DAO. He goes on a three-year run, ruling the rap scene. In his words: “ Got a mil’ out the deal and I’m still on the grind.” In February 2003, 50 Cent drops his debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin’ and shatters all records. Dre and Eminem ended up signing him to one of the biggest contracts for a new artist ever.
But eventually, a bidding war did start between the labels. Throughout 2002 his popularity kept building, with his team’s efforts.
Rap music at the time had gone full R&B, led by Ja Rule, so it was so refreshing to hear aggressive rap music again courtesy of 50 and his G-Unit crew. I had to listen, so I ordered all his mixtapes as CDs on. 50 needed to restart from the ground up, to build a buzz on the street level with mixtapes. In the two years it took him to recover, his label dropped him, and no one in the New York rap scene wanted anything to do with him.