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Snoop Dogg plans to relaunch Death Row as “an NFT label”

By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 16 February 2022

Snoop Dogg says that he wants to relaunch Death Row Records as “an NFT label”, after acquiring the legendary hip hop brand from the MNRK Music Group last week.

The rapper dropped in on a fan Clubhouse room for a quick chat yesterday. Explaining his plans for the label, he said: “Death Row will be an NFT label. We will be putting out artists through the metaverse. Just like we broke the industry when we [were] the first independent [label] to be major, I want to be the first major [label] in the metaverse”.

It was announced that Snoop Dogg had acquired the Death Row Records brand last week, reconnecting him with the company that released his first two albums in the 1990s. The label and its catalogue had passed through a number of owners over the years after often controversial founder Suge Knight lost control of it, ultimately ending up with the Blackstone investment fund via its ownership of the aforementioned MNRK Music Group. It was Blackstone that sold it to Snoop.

Of course, it’s one thing to say you’re launching an NFT label and then throw a load of buzzwords around. What does an “NFT label” actually mean in practice, though? Well, lucky for us all, Snoop has already proven that he can make money selling music NFTs, having turned over tens of millions via some non-fungible tokens linked to his new album ‘BODR (Bacc On Death Row)’, which was released last week.

Announced to coincide with the announcement of his Death Row acquisition, that NFT drop was done via a partnership with blockchain gaming company Gala Games and its new “decentralised record label” Gala Music. As well as putting out the album via the normal channels, it was also released as a collection of 25,000 NFT “stash boxes”, each costing around $5000. Each stash box contains one of the album’s seventeen tracks, and there are extra bonuses for anyone who manages to collect all seventeen.

As an extra gimmick, holders of one of those NFTs can make some money from the music. They don’t get any actual rights in the music itself, but they will seemingly receive some of Gala’s own cryptocurrency as the tracks are played on Gala’s own streaming service. Assuming that they are.

There is now less than 24 hours to go on the initial offering of the ‘BODR’ NFTs, with more than 16,000 shifted so far. If all 25,000 are sold, that will generate around $125 million. Snoop and Gala will presumably then earn more from any subsequent trading of the NFTs – which fans are encouraged to do in order to get the complete seventeen track collection – and more cash still from the minting of Gala Music Tokens as the music is played on the Gala streaming service.

So, with the potential to get rich(er) quick and then continue earning, you can see why Snoop Dogg would be keen to get in on all this beyond his own album. And then he can use all that money to build some sort of underwater house once climate change makes the land uninhabitable.