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Cherie Hu from Water and Music discusses Web3 at Consensys 2022

Water and Music, the newsletter and research DAO (decentralized autonomous group) developing the innovative's guide to the business of music, was designed to help facilitate conversations conversations between people in music technology. Now they're going one step further, actively engaging the industry hive of minds to design research-based projects, and also to reward everyone involved. This latest dive by the company has been to the abyss that is Web3, the conceptual next generation of the internet built on blockchain technology.

"I think a big part of why we are expanding is because we're using collaborative models for editorial research," begins Cherie Hu who is the founder of Water and Music. Cherie Hu explains that the business does regular 'research sprints' lasting up to 10 weeks when they pick a specific topic to gather as much data as they can for their clients The most recent one was on Web3.

"We're trying to comprehend how to understand the State of the Union for the latest technological trends within music, specifically those that are very noisy," she explains. "Web3 is a perfect illustration as there's a lot of chaos; nobody knows the exact nature of what's going on. This is the most up-and-down tunnel and it continues to go down. It's as if, "What's going on? ?'!"

Cherie's most popular mantras particularly in the field of business reports she has been a constant source of actionable writing. "At the conclusion of each article, you'll be armed with a better idea about what you can do within your field or ways to improve at the job you do. The closing of the gap between what people in the community require, as well as the topics we write about is crucial," Cherie explains. These research sprints are conducted after they've decided to focus on a particular topic the team goes out to talk to members of the Water and Music community: "We inquire, 'What are you currently struggling with?' then we ask the community to provide the responses. Our report comes directly from those needs," she tells me.

In the world of music it is not surprising that one of the top concerns is fan sentiment. "I believe that's factor that explains why lots of musicians aren't doing NFTs in the moment: because they fear negative reactions from their the fans," she muses. "We did a report on concerns around Web3. Of course, in the field of music there are many concerns around licensing and intellectual property (IP) that are impacted by NFTs. That was a whole chapter!"

In true fashion, the Water and Music research sprints are incredibly community-centric. "It's an open-ended ideation process and we have a large number of individuals to assist us do the study," Cherie says. To date, it appears that the Water and Music community has released two reports in this group structure. Keeping on-trend, they sold NFTs retroactively so that if people wanted to support the research, they could - and those revenues were split equally among participants. "It's clear to me that the result of the research was superior to if a singular person tried to research every aspect of Web3. This research would not be fully completed!" she smiles. "It's convinced me of the value of not just linking people, but also synthesising collectively information."

the Water and Music meetup at the NFT.NYC conference

Cherie states that the next report collaboratively created within the community has already been started. "We're researching even more nebulous topics now, for example the metaverse -- whatever that means!" she jokes. "We're not even trying to build something right now, we're just trying to figure out what people's opinions are about it and what people are confused about." The report includes interviews with artists, entrepreneurs, and professionals from the industry regarding their definition of the metaverse , the goals they're trying to achieve in it, as well what is proving problematic.

Cherie says that her aim is to blend this research by creating online tools that address these issues. "We tried this on a couple of Web3 themes already such as the secondary sale of music via NFTs as well as shares of royalties. Certain smart contracts stipulate that 10 to 20% of all secondary sales will go to the artist who originally created it and many users are communicating the idea as a profit. The reality is that the majority of NFT's don't generate an additional sale," Cherie explains. Cherie thinks that the value is in the direct relation and the connection that an NFT is a part of, and not so much in the opportunity to having an item that can be sold on to others later.

In addition to the report, Water and Music will be creating a dashboard for tracking where customers can enter their NFT collection to determine the extent to which there has been other sales or, if there have been, how the NFT is performing in the marketplace. "We want to build more interactive tools: it's similar to interactive data journalism particularly for artists as they're probably the people who think the most about releasing or pricing NFT drops. We're building critical frameworks and tools to assist people in doing this analysis work by themselves."

Conflicting visions

Cherie observes that some of these cutting-edge terminology are getting more obscure and less clear with time "For the metaverse, for instance, there's a massive disparity between the way the concept of metaverse was historically as well as conceptually been defined, from back in the '60s." Cherie explains her Water and Music team is creating a framework to understand how the metaverse was defined in the past, and then the gaps between what we expect and what is actually happening.

"The initial sci-fi works that mentioned the metaverse had a grand vision that interconnected both virtual and IRL worlds. It's a long way from that vision right currently. But at the same time within the music industry, artists are saying 'I just launched my personal metaverse!' even though they really mean the concept of a virtual universe.

"There are now directly conflicting visions of the metaverse," she continues. "You can find Meta (Facebook's holding company) as well as Epic Games on one side Both are centralized and one entity owns everything, but then there is the concept of a Web3-forward open, decentralized metaverse that has interoperable assets and identities. It is logical to try at least experimenting with blockchain and the role it can play in helping facilitate this, however it directly contradicts Facebook's approach."

Cherie says that the metaverse has "just turned into this vague word that anyone could use for the benefit of their own" and she wants to break through the confusion. This is completely in line with her raison d'etre: Water and Music can critically and analytically dig into the subject, then be able to provide practical information to help people decide how to react. It has practical applications also, for instance, aiding artists and their teams when they are evaluating partnering with specific metaverse-based platforms.

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The Water and Music team

These research initiatives can be seen as a natural extension of Water and Music's work: "My 'why' for this organization is to help members get to know the world more as well as understanding their place within the global community," Cherie says. Cherie wants people to be best prepared so they are able to make the greatest impact on their industry.

"For Water and Music the main focus is the music industry, and that comes down to an individual motive. It's a passion for me since I was a child playing piano. I spent a lot of time in the company of classical musicians and I enjoy interacting with all artists and getting their perspective about where technology is heading. Hopefully, whatever knowledge we put out there helps the artists and teams get to know tech better, so they can use it to make amazing work!"

There's a little bit of 'taking control back' with this. Cherie wants to reassure the artists that they hold more power than what it appears: "Certainly, in the streaming world, there are growing consolidations that are which are led by Spotify and other big tech businesses. Rates of royalties are dropping and the trend is all downhill! So we're providing artists the tools to understand the variety of alternatives. The artists we train and people around them to think more entrepreneurially."

A group of practice

"It's mostly an academic phrase, but I feel it's really applicable in the context of Water and Music: we're in a group of practitioners," Cherie continues. "The term was introduced in the year 1991 by cognitive sociologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger] and represents a group of people who do not have only a shared interest and passion, but also come together to focus on finding out how to make something better."

The author explains that this could be the case for people working who are in the same industry or with similar positions within different sectors. They communicate frequently, and share knowledge. "Usually this is for professional communities but can also be for creative communities for example, in the field of music. There's a part of not just producing media and making tools, but also encouraging peer-to-peer education. That'll be a really important aspect of the future, dissolving the information barriers in the music industry and encouraging people to be more cooperative," Cherie adds.

The Water and Music meetup at the NFT.NYC event.

Cherie ends her show in a typical fashion and encourages collaboration in her Water and Music community. "In the next couple of months, we'll carry out interviews with artists platform owners, artists, and startups founders. The metaverse research is likely to continue throughout this summer until the beginning of autumn, so if you would like to get involved with that, contact me. If anyone has recommendations for people to interview we're all ears!"

For more information, you can follow Cherie 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.