Space Yacht
Space Yacht
Space Yacht is a promotion company based in Los Angeles, California known for showcasing dance music at their parties.
It was founded in 2015 by Henry Lu, Rami Perlman and Ollie Zhang.
Overview
Space Yacht's Ollie Zhang, left, Henry Lu and Rami Perlman (Photo by Danny Liao)
Space Yacht launched in 2015 with their first party having Ghastly and Ookay play. [1] Both artists have gone on to make a name for themselves and perform the festival circuit. [1] They later made a name for themselves for their surprise guests which included Steve Aoki B2B AUTOEROTIQUE, Snails, Slushii, and SNBRN. [1] Space Yacht has had a residency at Sound Nightclub since January 2018 and hosts events in different cities in the United States. [1] Their weekly Tuesday shows at Sound are often secret lineups with a different genre for every night such as House, Trap, Moombahton, Dubstep, Jersey club, and more.
Champions of the COVID-19 Era
Adaptation is the secret to survival as a curator or party brand during Coronavirus (COVID-19). Anyone who has been forced to take off their usual promoter hats and put on their thinking caps will die if they become complacent or refuse to use technologies to foster online communities.
As the pandemic forced Space Yacht to halt its annual run of 150 global shows, its creators pressed on without delay under those restrictions.
Space Yacht is proving to be one of the pandemic era's leaders, with moves including unveiling an online label and partnering with renowned artist Golweard on the first Non-Fungible Token (NFT) collection.
Founders
In 2015, Space Yacht began as a small back-alley business party behind a speakeasy in Los Angeles. It has since developed into a well-known tastemaker in the electronic music industry, holding weekly residencies and festivals in over 150 cities around the world.
The founders of Space Yacht, Rami Perlman and Henry Lu, met at one of the early parties and adopted the idea of NFTs and visual art as a response to the events industry's 2020 freeze due to the pandemic.
Space Yacht is considered as an early data point for the fruitful use of NFTs as a conduit between brands and their loyal fans since it was the first music brand on Nifty Gateway.
When we started Space Yacht over five years ago, we never thought our little gathering of friends and DJ's would amount to much of anything.
We were just three guys with day jobs who had a passion for underground dance music and all the visual aesthetic that surrounded it.
We’ve found happiness and success in becoming a platform for creative people who have a unique vision.
Although our passions started with music, our proximity to the sheer amount of creatives in our world have brought us into new disciplines including clothing design, content broadcasting, and now.
Foray into NFTs
Space Yacht has continued to break boundaries in the electronic music industry, from becoming a leader in the live action space to creating their own music label.
With their new foray into Crypto Art , they've helped propel the Cryptocurrency world forward. Their second crypto-art collection, dubbed "Space Yacht Iconography," was launched just before Christmas and sold out in three minutes on Blockchain digital platform Nifty Gateway. It was created by artists who met in person at Space Yacht events.
Since galleries and museums have been compelled to close their doors, artists have turned to the digital realm to display their work.
Crypto-art is an emerging form of creative production and curation based on Blockchain Technology, in which scarce digital artworks are exchanged digitally for rare cryptocurrencies. Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are another name for these pieces of art.
As the trend of exchanging cryptocurrencies has grown in popularity, so has the number of digital blockchain-based marketplaces dedicated to the trade of cryptocurrencies for NFTs.
Though Nifty Gateway is a well-known example, other websites such as Dada.NYC
and CryptoKitties have also existed.[12]
NFT Collections by Space Yacht
In the summer of 2020, the revolutionary party brand embarked on the first foray into the crypto space by producing the fastest-selling NFTs ever seen on Nifty Gateway. With 230 items sold in under two and a half minutes, a new bar was set for the entire electronic music scene's ability to build a commercially viable online ecosystem for artists to thrive.Until the pandemic last year, Space Yacht was putting on 150 shows a year all around the country.[13] The multinational party brand that dominated the event market, transitioned into the digital arena by releasing a record label and joining the crypto-art room.[11]
Second Collection; Space Yacht Iconography I
Space Yacht Iconography Collect is their second collection.Their
second album, the Space Yacht Iconography Collection, debuted just before Christmas 2020 and sold out in under three minutes, making it the most successful Space Yacht campaign ever. Since
then, Space Yacht NFTs have increased in value by at least five times their original value.
I’ve been a physical art collector for over 15 years and to be able to now collect digital art is exhilarating and simultaneously a whole new business for our brand.
Quickly after our first collection sold out, we saw other music artists and brands get into the space which we see as a good thing.
The more people who get into it, the more viability it has for the future.
We are confident that NFTs will become a force within the industry and a new way for musicians and digital artists to monetize their work.
Rami perlman, Co-Founder of Space Yacht
Space Yacht's second collection, which debuted just before Christmas in 2020 and sold out in under three minutes, manages to defy expectations.
This album, dubbed "Space Yacht Iconography," featured digitally animated works created by the collective's in-house creatives.
Smiley smiles, burgers, twerking corpses, and playfully nihilistic affirmations like “WE ARE SO F*CKED” are among the works that are influenced by popular iconography synonymous with rave culture and the iconic Space Yacht party format.[2]
Third Collection;Iconography Collection Volume II
On Monday, March 8 at 4 p.m., global party brand Space Yacht released their third NFT (non-fungible token) album, "Iconography Collection Volume II," through Nifty Gateway.
The third NFT collection from the industry leaders in the visual art realm would delve further into their own universe of crypto-memes, taking back characters like the Twerk Skeleton and Crypto-Smiley from previous NFT drops.
We’re starting to see NFTs as a new form of story telling and expression for our brand.Part
of the fun of NFTs is the idea that you can string themes and storylines across multiple pieces or collections.
says Space Yacht co-founder and DJ LondonBridge
The Space Yacht Iconography Collection II is a progression of Space Yacht's main themes influenced by rave culture iconography, including smilies, Space Yacht's iconic peak-of-the-party pizza races, animated drugs, twerking skeletons, and nihilistic prophecies like "WE ARE SO FCKED."
The iconography pays tribute to a unique Space Yacht ritual, in which the founders hand out free pizza slices on the dance floor at 1 a.m. at every function.
“Iconography Set Volume II,” the third NFT (non-fungible token) collection from global party brand Space Yacht, smashed records once again.Space
Yacht sold 579 units, more than twice the previous drops, with a total of $482,000 in revenue. Nifty
Gateway's top decline of the day was the "Iconography Set Volume II," with the collection's 1/1 auction piece selling for $12,600.