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Cherie Hu of Water and Music discusses Web3 at Consensys 2022
Water and Music, the newsletter as well as the study DAO (decentralized autonomous group) developing the innovative's guide to the world of music was created to facilitate conversations between music tech professionals. They're now going one step further and actively engaging the industry hive brain to design research-based projects, and reward everyone that is involved.
"My reason for having this membership is helping people get to know the world more as well as understanding their role within the global community," begins Cherie Hu, founder of Water and Music. Her goal is to aid people to get the best possible education so that they have the best influence on the industry they work in. One of Cherie's key mantras that she has used, particularly in the realm of business reporting, has focused on writing that can be used in action. "At the end of each article, you'll be armed with an idea about what you can do within your field or ways to improve at what you do. The closing of the gap between what people in the society need and our writing, is vital," Cherie explains.
Nowadays the Water and Music team has expanded to conduct regular research sprints' lasting between 10 and 12 weeks in which they pick a subject in order to collect as much knowledge as they can for their clients. In these sprints of research, when they've settled about a subject, they go out and engage with people in the Water and Music community: "We seek out 'What's your current concerns?' then we ask the community to provide the responses. Then the structure of our report comes directly from those requirements," she tells me.
In true fashion, the Water and Music research sprints are extremely community-focused and collaborative. "It's an ideation process that is bottom-up and we involve a lot of people to help with the editing research," Cherie says. As of now, the Water and Music community has released two reports in this collaborative model. To keep up with trends, they sold NFTs retroactively , so that anyone who wanted to support this research effort, they had the option do so - and those revenues were split evenly among the participants. "It's clear to me that the result of the research was much better than if one singular person tried to research everything. It would be impossible to make the work complete!" she smiles. "It's been a great experience for me to see the power of not just connecting people but collectively synthesizing information."
Regaining power
"It's more of an academic phrase, but I feel that it is applicable to Water and Music: we're in a group of practitioners," Cherie continues. "The concept was first introduced in the year 1991 by cognitive sociologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger] and it refers to a community of people who not only have a shared interest, but who come together with the sole aim of finding out how to make something better."
The writer explains how this might relate to individuals who are in the same industry or in similar roles across industries. They communicate frequently, and exchange knowledge. Water and Music will contribute by not just producing tools and media that facilitate peer-to peer education: "That'll be a really crucial aspect of the future: breaking down barriers to information in the industry of music and encouraging everyone to become more collaborative," Cherie adds.
There's an element of 'taking control back' with this. Cherie hopes to assure the artists that they hold more power than what it appears: "Certainly, in the streaming world, there are more and more consolidations, which are led by Spotify along with other tech giant companies. Royalty rates are going down and it's all going downwards! So we're providing artists the tools to understand the many different options. The artists we train and individuals around them to think more entrepreneurially."
The Water and Music team
Cheire says that the expression "community of practice" initially was a reference to professional groups, but it can also be relevant to creative communities for example, as we have here. For Water and Music the exact focus is the music industry, and it's all down to a personal reason. "I'm driven by this job since I was a child playing piano. I spent lots of playing with classical musicians and I enjoy interacting with all artists as well as hearing their thoughts about where technology is heading," Cherie continues. "Hopefully the knowledge we put out there will help artists and their teams better understand technology, so they can use it to make cool art!"
Down the rabbit hole
The latest research sprint has been into the mess that is Web3, the conceptual next technology of the internet based using blockchain technology. "We're looking to comprehend how to understand the State of the Union for the latest trends in technology in music, especially the ones that have a lot of noise," she explains. "Web3 is a perfect illustration due to the sheer amount of chaos; nobody knows what's happening. It's the most extreme rabbit hole and it just goes on and on. Then it's like, "What's going on ?'!"
In the music industry it is not surprising that among the most pressing issues is the fan's opinions. "I consider that to be the top reason that lots of performers aren't performing NFTs currently: out of the fear of negative reactions from their the fans," she muses. "We produced a study on concerns around Web3. Of course, in the world of music, there are many concerns around licensing as well as intellectual property (IP) as well as NFTs. It's a whole chapter!"
Tlg9Yi9H8w9qUpATyR6b the Water and Music meetup at the NFT.NYC event
The next collaboration report in the community has already begun. "We're looking into even more mysterious issues right now, such as the metaverse, however that's defined!" Cherie jokes. "We're not making any plans to create anything right now; we're simply trying to understand what people's opinions are about it, and also what they have a hard time understanding." The publication includes interviews with artists, entrepreneurs, and professionals from the industry on how they view the concept of metaverse, and what they're hoping to achieve through it and also what's proving to be problematic.
Cherie mentions that the goal is to blend this research and the development of online tools to solve these problems. "We have done this in the past with a few Web3 themes that we already have, like the secondary sale of music via NFTs and shares of royalties. Some smart contracts state that 10 to 20 percent of secondary sales will go to the original creator and many users are communicating that as a benefit. However, my opinion is that the vast majority of NFT's don't generate any secondary sales," Cherie explains. She believes that the value lies in the direct relationship and connection that the NFT symbolizes, not the opportunity to having something to continue selling later.
Together with the report Water and Music will be creating a dashboard for tracking where users can input an NFT collection to see whether there were any additional sales, and if yes, how the NFT is moving through the market. "We are looking to develop more interactive tools. It's as interactive data journalism especially for musicians, since they are probably the ones who are thinking the most about the release prices for their NFT drops. We're developing critical frameworks and tools to help people do this analytical task themselves."
Conflicting visions
Cherie says that some terms in these newer ones become more complicated instead of clearer, with time "For the metaverse for example, there's a huge disparity between the way the concept of metaverse was historically as well as conceptually been defined, from back in the '60s." She elaborates that the Water and Music team is creating a framework to understand historical definitions of the metaverse, and then how they can bridge the gap between belief and reality.
"The early sci-fi novels that mentioned the metaverse had an expansive vision of interconnected virtual and IRL worlds. The world is so far from this right now. However, at the same time there is a trend in the world of music the artists say 'I just launched my personal metaverse!' even though they are really talking about an imaginary world.
"There are now directly conflicting conceptions of metaverses," she continues. "You have Meta (Facebook's holding company) as well as Epic Games on one side they are both centralized, and one entity owns everything and everything else. But then you have the vision of a Web3-forward, decentralized, metaverse with interoperable assets and identities. It is logical to explore blockchain, and the roles it can play in helping facilitate that, but that directly is in opposition to Facebook's strategy."
Cherie says that the metaverse has "just turned into this vague word which anyone can use to personal gain" and she wants to cut through the clutter. This is in perfect alignment with her main purpose: Water and Music analyzes and critically look at the topic, and then be able to provide practical insights to advise people what to do. These are real-world applications, too, such as helping artists and their team to evaluate working with specific metaverse platform.
The Water and Music meetup at the NFT.NYC event.
Cherie ends her show in a typical fashion by encouraging collaboration among and within Water and Music community. "In the coming months, we'll be rolling interviews with artists, platforms, and startup founders. Out research into the metaverse will probably continue through the autumn and summer months therefore, if you're looking to get involved in the metaverse, contact me. If you have suggestions for interviewing people, I'm open for suggestions!"
To be involved, join us on Twitter. Cherie for updates on Twitter: @water andmusic. To become a member of the Water and Music community, and gain access to the community's in-depth research reports and Discord server, go to waterandmusic.com/membership.