Back in February, Snoop Dogg became the owner of Death Row Records, the label that jumpstarted his career. The acquisition, though, led to several albums under Death Row being removed from streaming services, including Snoop’s Doggystyle and Dr. Dre’s The Chronic.
In a recent interview with Drink Champs, the acclaimed rapper explained that he removed the Death Row discography from streaming platforms because such services don’t pay artists enough, and what little money that is paid mostly goes to the label. “First thing I did was snatch all the music off those platforms traditionally known to people because those platforms don’t pay,” Snoop said. “And those platforms get millions and millions of streams, and nobody gets paid other than the record labels. So, what I wanted to do is snatch my music off, create a platform similar to Amazon, Netflix, Hulu. It’ll be a Death Row app, and the music, in the meantime, will live in the metaverse.”
Not long after he announced his new role as owner, he revealed that the new iteration of Death Row would become the first NFT label. He stated, “We will be putting out artists through the metaverse. Just like [Death Row] broke the industry when we was the first independent to be major, I want to be the first major in the metaverse.”
With the formation of this new app, Snoop stated, “I want to create an avenue to where I can show people how to not always have to go through the slave trade, but create our own trade where we’re engaging with our own fans that’s buying our music, that’s making money off the music, and then making us money off of the music by it being traded and sold.”
Using himself as an example, his latest album, BODR (Bacc on Death Row), garnered $21 million in metaverse on the first day of its release. As of Monday (April 18), though, Death Row’s entire discography lives on TIDAL.
Watch Snoop’s full Drink Champs episode below.
