Heart Project April Update
Over the last few months the team has been working hard on a variety of things which we will provide a closer look at in this article.
We’ve been fortunate to have made positive strides in the space over the last few months, leading to many amazing meetings with founders, developers, collectors, tech platforms, investors, and the people defining web3.0. A lot of these meetings are leading towards longer partnerships that will come into play over the next year. There are many exciting things in the works which will take time and patience, but many of these ideas have been teased in the Discord (if you look carefully). As soon as we have more updates surrounding those partnerships we will share them.
I would also like to say, I think there is quite an unrealistic expectation for output in this space. I saw this tweet today and it really resonated with me.
I assure you that the team is hard at work on bringing our holders the most value as soon as possible, but I also want to remind everyone that this project is a long term play. Bigger partnerships sometimes move at their own speed. We have a great team of doxxed individuals building this brand, and our priority is always to honor our vision of elevating artists.
I want to make a call for more constructive thoughts in the discord. We always love hearing constructive ideas, but we don’t love hearing people hate on the project because they haven’t gotten rich off of it yet. Be thoughtful with why you are part of this community and what you write in our common spaces.
Now onto the updates…
Website update and announcement
A lot of our energy has been going into the conception and build of a tech platform / dashboard for heart holders. This platform will change the game for us as a project and we also think it has the potential to change the game for the NFT space as a whole. The dashboard will be made up with many widgets helping us with community management and collaboration.
We will be providing tech updates on the 1st of every month. There are a lot of moving parts and we’re excited to give you guys constant updates on the things we are building. You can expect the next platform tech update on May 1st.
Asset refresh
In our relaunched website, we will be introducing a feature that will allow heart holders to choose to update their NFTs with refreshed assets and backgrounds. We spent many months deliberating if we should refresh every heart, but decided to put the power into the hands of the community and make this refresh an optional feature to those who are interested. When you refresh your NFT, you refresh the metadata and the NFT itself changes. These changes are not permanent and should you change your mind or miss your old heart, you will be able to revert back to its original state. As soon as it is finished we will ship it out for the community! This feature will be part of the larger dashboard we are building but this feature will roll out by itself before the dashboard is complete. Good products take time, and we appreciate your patience as we build this next element.
Hearts Album
After months of research, meetings and learning a lot we are excited to announce we will soon be starting our first Hearts Album! This is going to be a very special process, and we want to be clear that a few of these decisions are subject to change and we are open to community feedback and involvement in every step of the way. The team currently spearheading this will be Aidan Cullen, D33J, Tjani Warren and Alex Valenti.
Aidan, founder of the Heart project, will head A & R and creative for the album. After working with many artists over the last 5 years of his career Aidan has led and helped on album campaigns for Trippie Redd, Omar Apollo, Halsey, Bakar, Dominic Fike and many others. Aidan is primarily a photographer and director but has found himself connecting the dots in the music world.
Alex will help run operations. Alex is a heart holder who I met through the community! She does some great things in the music space and was in Forbes 30 under 30 last year.
D33J will EP the album and be integral in the A & R process. D33J is a co-founder of the indie record label WEDIDIT and has been producing music for 10 years, working on songs with people like ASAP Rocky, Corbin fka spooky black, Yung Lean, lil Yachty etc. D33J is also part of the Hearts team and helps across events, clothing development and music, but will be turning to focus on this for the next few months.
Tjani will also be integral in the A & R process as well as some production and project management. Tjani has been working around some of the best writers, producers, artists in the game for 10+ years. He is also our community manager! Tjani will be the bridge between the community and the outside artists working on the album.
The rest of the Heart staff will be integral in developing this album as well, but there will also be many other spots within the label that will need to be filled by Heart holders as time progresses.
The process will work something like this:
- We are going to start a label co-owned by the Heart Project and the HeartsDAO.
- We are most likely going to get a distribution partner to help fund and distribute the album. This is very important; they will help with digital marketing, playlisting, physical ad campaigns, targeted ads etc. They will also provide some up-front funding for studio costs, producer fees, operational fees, creative budget (music videos, album covers, rollout items — which we will all be making together as a community) etc. We have had some very promising meetings with multiple distribution companies — we are hoping to lock in a deal very shortly and announce that to the community. This will be a licensing deal. We, together, will still own all of the masters. The distribution company will get a small portion of the income for a certain amount of time.
- Then, we make the album! How does that work?
- Here is the current vision: we want to spend a few weeks gathering samples, beats, loops and sounds from community members and finding out who specializes in what. We then want to have a 2–3 week writers camp where producers, songwriters and artists work together to write some songs. We are then going to have 2–3 weeks of a recording period where artists come through and record.
- Each song will incorporate at least one Heart holder. We are going to be involving some really amazing artists, ranging from up-and-coming artists to some of the biggest artists in the world, all working with heart holders. Some Heart holders will be physically present and some will contribute ideas virtually and we can pitch those ideas to artists. Some sessions will definitely involve some virtual interaction. We are still figuring out how it all flows.
- This entire process will be filmed and a lot of it will be streamed online/ possibly to a metaverse parcel. We are going to turn the entire process into a documentary and we’re looking to do some cool stuff with that final doc…
- Then we will mix, master and finish the album with the artists and our community.
- Then comes the visual side….as a community we are going to shoot the album cover, come up with some creative rollout ideas, and make the music videos together.
- Then comes the release strategy… which we will work on with our distribution partner when the time comes. We have already had some amazing meetings with huge players in the music space who are excited to get behind the album. We currently plan on using our web3.0 community to make and release an album on the typical streaming platforms; apple, spotify, tidal, itunes etc. because we feel that visibility of these records is more important than dropping it in a fully web3.0 way. Yes, a big portion of the profits will still flow back into the community wallet :). We understand that there are some web2.0 parts of this plan. We don’t fully believe that dropping on a fully decentralized platform right now is our best option. If we can create an amazing album with our community and some of the most interesting names in music we have the ability to make a huge name for our brand and our community members worldwide. We, together as a community are going to have ownership over a very culturally important album, with very culturally important players involved.
Again, many of these ideas are still being developed and will change. If you are a vocalist, producer, sound engineer, manager, A&R, publicist, creative director, photographer, director etc. now is a great time to let the community know what you do. In the next few weeks we are going to open up some new channels to help communicate some of these things. This process will take multiple months and will most likely be released in 2023.
Merch Portal
Merch Portal clothes: If you ordered tees, hats and hoodies, your orders will ship out next week, starting tomorrow, 4/11.
Orders including jackets will take an additional 2–4 weeks due to supply chain issues outside of our control. As soon as those jackets are through production, they will be shipped out to holders.
DeadFellaz
DF x HEARTS Tees will start shipping out 4/18
DF x HEARTS Bags will start shipping out 4/18
Jackets: these will take an additional 2–4 weeks due to supply chain issues outside of our control. As soon as they’re done those will be shipped out.
NFTLA RECAP
We closed out the month of March at NFTLA by showing some love to our hometown and giving heart holders the chance to meet up IRL. Sophia spoke on a panel with Noah Kline (CEO of Wincast) and Flosstradamus to talk about the Future of Entertainment in Web3. Aidan spoke at the NFTLA conference about the future of communities in web3.0. We closed out the week with a Hearts party at the Echo in LA, with performances by partyshirt, Blondie Beach, D33J, Noodles, Jehmahk and headlined by MADEINTYO (recap is up on Youtube). No funds were taken from the community wallet to bring this to life.
Content
We just brought on filmmaker Council Brandon to lead production, who most recently worked with Vogue China and Tory Burch.
Over the next couple months, we will be diving into producing more video content — youtube videos, mini documentaries on collaborators and heart holders, interviews, podcast episodes, and content across all social media. Most of our BTS footage, photography, and editing work has been done by heart holders, and we would like to continue to offer opportunities to those in our community as well as open up new opportunities for more holders to participate in Heart Project productions. If you are a holder and you have skills in these areas, you will be able to contribute and will be paid industry standard rates.
An upcoming Team Doc highlights each member of the Heart Project internal team, gives insight to their background and sheds light on what they do for the Heart Project. We’re almost done with editing, and this should be released this week.
Podcast Series
We’re commencing a youtube series titled HEART2HEART. The purpose of the series is to connect with individuals who are doing really fascinating things in the creative world or in their lives. We want to create pieces that can be inspirational and informative for creatives. By doing this, we also want to bring more visibility to the Heart Project and our mission by engaging with creatives and attracting an audience that is interested in hearing their stories.
Here are the next 2 episodes:
EP 1: STOMP DOWN Records — Najai and Nate from our squad hung out with Toby and Ezra, the founders of STOMP DOWN, a Houston-based record label they launched in 2020. We spoke with them about their paths as young managers and producers and how they eventually started their own business. They manage acts like Reggie, Maxo Kream, Tay-K, Fade Em All and many more. This was already shot and is in the editing process. Will be released in April.
EP 2: Ogbo Okoronkwo — 2022 Super Bowl winner from the Rams, who is also a photographer! Najai and Nate met up with Ogbo to talk about his time on the Rams team and winning the Superbowl, and then got sweaty for a group hot yoga session. This was already shot and is in the editing process. Will be released in April.
We are currently shooting the next 2 episodes of HEART2HEART with some really cool guests.
Community Project update
Robogeist & Rein & Leandro
We received so many incredible submissions from the hearts community and are thrilled to be able to support these talented creatives’ visions. After an initial internal review, the community chose three winners to receive funding for their creative projects: Leandro Saez, Robogeist, and REIN. Each winner will have a dedicated Discord channel to source ideas and ask for help, post updates, and share their creative processes with the hearts community. Each of these projects are incredibly original and creative and we cannot wait to see how the final versions come to life. Their token gated discord channels will go live starting this week!
Leandro Saez is creating a graphic novel based around mental health.
Robogeist will be creating a short animated series using AI rotoscoping software and producing related merch.
REIN will be making a series of music videos for his new album.
Project submission zoom calls
All those who submitted but did not receive funding will have the chance to do a video call with hearts team members to workshop their ideas, receive feedback and mentorship, and ask questions. We encourage those who were not selected to apply again in a future round.
CULT&RAIN collab (part 2)
“On April 26th 2022, CULT&RAIN will launch Drop001 tying 999 limited edition NFTs to luxury fashion Varsity jackets and will be available to MINT on www.cultandrain.com.
Following the inaugural success of CULT&RAIN’s Genesis Drop in February 2022, the innovative fashion brand continues to live its purpose of being a luxury fashion house born from Web3 and forges the future by tying digital and physical products together. This forthcoming Drop001 comprises of 999 radical 4K 3D animated NFT’s matched with 999 luxury Varsity Jacket designs, designed by founder George Yang. CULT&RAIN continues to push the boundaries of luxury fashion with 4 original Jacket designs, inspired by 1960s & 70’s collegiate references. Each NFT is tied to an identical Varsity Jacket valued at over $1800, sourcing the finest materials and fabrications through CULT&RAIN’s coveted Italian supply chains.
The Drop001 collection of NFTs comprises of 4 radical Varsity designs in 4 unique colorways. 3 Varsity jackets are unique CULT&RAIN designs by George Yang and the 4th jacket is a radical COMMUNITY JACKET collaboration comprising of unique patches from The Heart Project, WonderPals, Robotos, XXXX and DeeZe CryptoPunk #465, this is the first widespread commercialization of CryptoPunk IP in IRL/NFT fashion. Each Community patch is positioned on the Varsity jacket creating an incredible unique design and serves not only as a tribute to these NFT communities, but as a testament to CULT&RAIN’s vision to drive the Web3 fashion revolution. This first-of-its-kind concept is exclusive to CULT&RAIN and pays respect to the Web3 community & its WAGMI values.
All CULT&RAIN Genesis Holders will receive premiere Allow-List access to the mint, followed by Community Allow-List access and, finally, Public access on Tuesday April 26th, 2022. Post-mint trading is being conducted on Cult&Rain Drop001 collection page on OpenSea.”
We are excited to be a part of the Web3.0 community jacket! Heart holders will have lots of whitelist opportunities and a big portion of our profits from this sale will go back into the community wallet.
Hearts Billboard
Part of our production proposal to the community included funding to rent a billboard in Los Angeles for three months. The billboard will rotate through featuring different heart holders’ creative works to give exposure to our community of artists and the heart project brand. There has been some backlash in the community regarding this idea so we are going to open up a different proposal for the 4 eth that was going to be dedicated to this. If the community decides they like another proposal more than the billboard idea, we will roll with that.
Emotional Hearts
We’re adding a token gated Emotional Hearts section in our Hearts Discord on 4/11. The Emotional Hearts project will be separated from the larger 2426C group it was originally part of and will now live inside the greater Hearts community.
Some next steps for Emotional Hearts:
Starting tomorrow (4/11) we are going to do a giveaway which holders can enter through Discord. Every Monday for the next three weeks we will be giving away an EU mystery box, which could include shirts, hoodies, jackets, hats, and maybe even a Bear Brick!
4/20 event
We’re partnering with Smokers Club, weedmaps, burb, + Buddy’s to do a sick concert in NY on 4/20. Free entrance available for holders. Event fliers will be posted this week with more info. No ETH from the community wallet will be taken out for this.
NFT NYC
Cooking up some exciting stuff…
Warp sound tour stop 5/4
We’re excited to be a part of Warpsound’s live tour in the metaverse. Warpsound is a rad project that launched which makes virtual artists and interactive music experiences for the metaverse with AI. Each episode will be a mix of interactive performance + community- focused variety show. We’re excited to explore this super fascinating new approach to interacting with music with our community.
Team additions
We have brought on three new people. We are bringing on a very talented and experienced UX/UI professional to help with the updated website and new tech features. We are also bringing on another front end developer to help on various things, with the main focus being the platform as well. Excited for both of them to start this week and heavily expedite this process. Luke and Fraser have been hard at work and we are excited to get them some more support! We also brought on a content producer as referenced above.
Benny + Lil Dicky song update
We have had extensive conversations with Benny, Dave, and the teams that work with them (managers, lawyers, label, publishing companies, publicists, etc.) to nail down the details of this collaboration. We are hoping to get this underway ASAP. More info soon here.
We love you all and are so excited for what this next chapter holds.
