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Cherie Hu from Water and Music discusses Web3 at Consensys 2022
Water and Music, the publication and research DAO (decentralized autonomous organisation) developing the innovative's guide to the world of music was designed to help facilitate conversations discussions between music industry professionals. tech. They're now going one step further, actively engaging with the industry's of minds to design research projects and to give everyone involved a reward. The latest research conducted by the company has been into the chaos that is Web3, the conceptual future of the web built on blockchain technology.
"I believe a large reason for us to be growing is that we're using more collaborative models to edit research," begins Cherie Hu, founder of Water and Music. The company regularly holds'research sprints' lasting up to 10 weeks where they choose a topic in order to collect as much information as possible to provide their customers; the most recent report focused on Web3.
"We're trying to understand how to understand the State of the Union for tech trends in music, particularly those that are very noisy," she explains. "Web3 is the perfect example due to the sheer amount of chaos; nobody knows the exact nature of what's going on. It's the biggest web and the rabbit hole just keeps going down. Then it's like, "What's going on ?'!"
Cherie's most popular mantras particularly in the field of business reporting she has been a constant source of useful writing. "At the end of reading every article, you'll get a better idea of what to do in your industry or how to improve at the job you do. Making sure that you are able to bridge the gap between what the community want, and the topics we write about is crucial," Cherie explains. For these research sprints, after they've decided on a topic then they head out to engage with people in the Water and Music community: "We inquire, 'What are you currently struggling with?' and we crowdsource the responses. Then the structure of our report is derived directly from these needs," she tells me.
In the world of music Unsurprisingly, among the most pressing worries is that of fan-generated opinions. "I think that's the number factor that explains why lots of musicians aren't doing NFTs in the moment: because they fear negative reactions from their fans," she muses. "We did a report on concerns around Web3. In the field of music there are plenty of issues with licensing and Intellectual property (IP) with NFTs. This is a full chapter!"
In true fashion, the Water and Music research sprints are extremely community-focused. "It's a bottom-up ideation and we engage a wide range of people in helping us do the study," Cherie says. To date, the Water and Music community has published two research reports under this group structure. In keeping with the trend, they offered NFTs in retroactive fashion, so that anyone who would like to contribute to their research they were able to - and that the profits were divided fairly among all contributors. "It's clear for me that the results of that research was so much better than if one singular person tried to research all of Web3. The work would never be completed!" she smiles. "It's convinced me of the potential of not only connecting people but collectively synthesizing knowledge."
The Water and Music meetup at the NFT.NYC conference
Cherie adds that the next collaborative report within the community has already started. "We're looking into even more mysterious issues right now, such as the metaverse -- however that's defined!" she quips. "We're not making any plans to create something right now, we're simply trying to understand the opinions of people about it and the things people are confused about." The report contains interviews with artists, startup founders and industry professionals on how they view the concept of metaverse, and the goals they're trying to do in it, as well things that have been proving to be problematic.
Cherie says that her aim is to blend this research by creating online tools that solve these problems. "We tried this on a couple of Web3 themes already such as second-hand sales of music using royalty shares and NFTs. Certain smart contracts stipulate that 10 to 20 percent of secondary sales will go to the artist who originally created it and a lot of users have been expressing this as an advantage. However, my opinion is that the vast majority of NFT's do not result in an additional sale," Cherie explains. She says that she thinks the value lies on the personal relationship and connection that the NFT symbolizes, and not just in the potential to have the ability to sell it again later.
Together with the report Water and Music will be creating a dashboard for tracking where users can input an NFT collection and see the extent to which there has been other sales or, if there have been and how the NFT has moved through the marketplace. "We are looking to develop more interactive tools: it's similar to interactive data journalism especially for musicians, since they're the ones who are thinking about the best ways to release and pricing their NFT drops. We're building essential frameworks and tools to aid people to do this work by themselves."
Conflicting visions
Cherie says that some of these cutting-edge terminology are getting more obscure instead of clearer, with time "For the metaverse, for instance, there's an enormous difference in how 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 traditional definitions of the metaverse and the gap between expectation and reality.
"The early sci-fi novels with a metaverse reference had a grand vision connected virtual as well as IRL worlds. The world is so far from that right currently. But at the same time within the music industry, artists are saying "I've launched my personal metaverse!' even though they are really talking about the concept of a virtual universe.
"There is a direct conflict between visions of the metaverse," she continues. "You can find Meta [Facebook's holding company] and Epic Games on one side Both are centralized and one entity owns everything, but then there is the vision of a Web3-forward multi-layered metaverse, with interoperable identities and assets. It is logical to try at least experimenting with blockchain and the role it can play in helping facilitate this, however it directly opposes Facebook's stance."
Cherie says that the metaverse has "just been transformed into a nebulous term that anyone could use for their own benefit" and she would like to cut through the nonsense. It is in line to Cherie's main purpose: Water and Music analyzes and critically look into the issue, and be able to provide practical knowledge to guide people on about how they should react. This has real-world use cases, too, such as aiding artists and their teams to evaluate partnering with specific metaverse platform.
The Water and Music team
These research initiatives are a natural continuation of Water and Music's work: "My 'why' for this association is to help people get to know the world more and then also understand their own place in the world," Cherie says. She wants to help people be best prepared so they will have the best influence on the industry they work in.
"For Water and Music the exact focus is the music industry, and it all comes back to the personal motivation. I'm motivated by this work due to the fact that I played piano. I spent a lot of time around classical musicians, but I love engaging with artists of all kinds and getting their perspective about where technology is heading. I hope that the knowledge we put out there helps the artists and teams get to know the technology more, and can use it to make cool work!"
There's a little bit of 'taking the control back' within this. Cherie wants to reassure musicians that they are more in influence than it might seem: "Certainly, in the streaming industry, there's growing consolidations that are which are led by Spotify along with other tech giant companies. The rates for royalties are decreasing but everything is going to go downwards! So we're providing artists the means to appreciate the variety of options. We're equipping artists and the people around them to think more entrepreneurially."
A community of practise
"It's more of academic concept, however I believe it really applies in the context of Water and Music: we're a community of practise," Cherie continues. "The concept was coined in 1991 by the cognitive sociologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger] and is a term used to describe a group of individuals that do not just share an interest in common in the same subject, but are also gathered to focus on finding out how to make something better."
She explains that this can relate to individuals in a similar industry, or who have similar jobs across industries. These people communicate regularly, and exchange knowledge. "Usually the purpose is to build professional groups, but it can be for creative communities for example, in the field of music. It's not just producing media and making tools, but also encouraging peer-to peer education. This will be an essential aspect of the future, eliminating information gaps within the industry of music and encouraging people to be more collaborative," Cherie adds.
The Water and Music meetup at the NFT.NYC conference
Cherie closes in usual fashion by encouraging collaboration among the Water and Music community. "In the next couple of months, we'll be carrying interviews with musicians, platforms, and startup founders. The metaverse research will probably continue through this summer until the beginning of autumn, so if you would like to get involved, please inform me. If anyone has recommendations of people to talk with, We're open to suggestions!"
For more information, you can 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.