David Choi Releases his Music NFT Collection: Happy Voices!
What a great way to start the week! As huge fans of his music, the team was excited to sit down with David Choi to speak all about his project launching this week: Happy Voices.
About David Choi
“Music is a universal language and I wanted people to hear little snippets of joy”
Many may be familiar with David Choi, a legendary musician has been in the music industry for almost 20 years, and is an early YouTuber — launching his channel on the 26th of August 2006 and amassing almost 1 million subscribers to date. Along with other early Asian American Youtubers such as Ryan Higa, Wong Fu Productions and Kevjumba, David helped pave the way for Asian representation within media.
Journey into the NFT Space
Shortly after the launch of Zodiac Friends in September last year, we created David an Honorary Zodiac Friend, who Matt (Zodiac Friends Co-Founder) has connected through Subtle Asian Traits. By doing this, we were able to onramp him into the space and kickstart his journey in NFTs.
Music NFTs
“I saw this as a new medium to express my creativity”
David Choi mentioned in the Twitter spaces that he has always been a fan of collecting baseball/basketball cards back in the day, and saw music NFT’s to be a medium to think of music as a collectible.
He stated that we are all still very early when it comes to music NFT’s, which was a reason he wanted to jump in early and get a head start, which reminds us of what his Youtube career also looked like — very early on the platform.
Bridging from Web 2 to Web 3
“I want to build in a new and exciting place where you can help write the rules of the game as opposed to just following the rules.
Whilst a lot of David’s friends who are more familiar with the Web 2 space are skeptical of the space, especially with their main audience being in Web 2, he still talks about it and shares his journey of how he went from being skeptical to believing in this space.
He is fascinated by technology and where it takes us.
Happy Voices Collection
“I wanted to approach Happy Voices collection as a way for me to give tribute to music of the past and bring it back into the future of Web 3.”
Earlier this year, David started work on the Happy Voices collection, which will eventually comprise of 50 unique, non-generative pieces performed, composed, produced and recorded by David Choi himself (without algorithmic generation). 24 of these pieces will be released this week with 5–10 editions each (a total of 225 pieces for the first drop).
David and his team have ensured that each NFT’s animation is perfectly and uniquely matched to its tune.
Our sit down with David revealed some further details about the drop. As always, DYOR:
Project mission: To explore the use cases of music NFTs which create utility for a musician’s fans and holders.
Utility: Although Happy Voices is primarily an art project, there are some use cases that David outlined, including:
- Commercial use of the tune, limited to YouTube and Twitch videos (for example in intros and outros), with proper accreditation
- Use of the NFT on metaverse platforms
- Creation of derivatives using the video/image and/or audio for personal and recreational use
- Use as a PFP on social media
- Future exploration of royalty collections
Mint details: Out of the 225 pieces, there are 207 Early Access spots reserved, 5 of which will be allowed to mint the ‘Themology’ series, which is the rarest Happy Voices.
- Early Access Mint (0.1ETH): 12th April PST
- Early Access Mint, Themology (0.5ETH): 12th April PST
- Auction: Ongoing, ends 12th April PST
Further alpha:
- HappyVoices metadata is frozen and decentralized on IPFS
- Themology holders have unique benefits, such as a lifetime pass (+1) to any David Choi show, speaking engagement, online and offline event anywhere in the world
We’re pumped for this collection to be released and excited to see the space of music NFTs evolve. Thank you to David for being an integral part of the Zodiac Friends community 💛
You can check out more details about the Happy Voices here:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HappyVoicesNFT
Discord: discord.gg/happyvoices
Opensea: https://opensea.io/collection/happyvoices
You can also replay the Twitte Spaces hosted by Zodiac Friends here.
To stay tuned to more upcoming interviews with Asian creators and builders, check out Zodiac Friends, an Asian NFT project that celebrates Asian culture ane empowers artists.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZodiacFriends_
Website: https://www.zodiacfriends.io/
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/6NEp3bG7kK
Opensea: https://opensea.io/collection/zodiacfriends
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/zodiacfriends
