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It's R2vgUULNXvgOULNXVh Cherie Hu of Water and Music discusses Web3 at Consensys 2022

Water and Music, the publication and research DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) developing the innovative's guide to the music business, was designed to help facilitate discussions between people in music tech. They're now going one step further and actively engaging with the industry's hive of minds to develop research projects and to reward the people who is involved.

"My  main reason behind this membership is helping people get to know the world more and then also understand their own place in the world," begins Cherie Hu, founder of Water and Music. She wants to help people be best prepared so they can make the most influence on the industry they work in. One of Cherie's key mantras particularly in the field of business reporting, has written in a way that is actionable. "At the end of reading any article, you'll have an idea of what to do within your field or ways to be better at the job you do. Closing that loop between what members of the community need, and our writing, is vital," Cherie explains.

Nowadays the Water and Music team has grown to hold regular 'research sprints' lasting about 10 weeks, where they choose a topic in order to collect as much knowledge as they can for their clients. In these sprints of research, once they have decided about a subject then they head out to speak to people in the Water and Music community: "We inquire, 'What are your concerns right now?' then we ask the community to provide the responses. Then the structure of our report is derived directly from these demands," she tells me.

In true fashion, the Water and Music research sprints are extremely collaborative and team-based. "It's an open-ended ideation process and we have a large number of people in helping with the editing research," Cherie says. So far the Water and Music community has published two research reports under this collaborative arrangement. Keeping on-trend, they sold NFTs retroactively so that, if anyone wanted to support their research they were able to do so - and the proceeds were distributed equally among those who contributed. "It's evident for me that the results of that research was so much better than if one single person attempted to study all the things. The work would never be fully completed!" she smiles. "It's made me believe in the power of not just creating connections, but more importantly, combining knowledge."

Returning the power

"It's more of an academic term, but I think it's really applicable to Water and Music: we're a community of practise," Cherie continues. "The term was coined in the year 1991 by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger] and it refers to a community of people that do not just share an interest in common and passion, but also come together to focus on discovering how they can do things better."

The writer explains how this might correspond to people from the same field, or in similar roles across industries. They communicate frequently, and also exchange information. Water and Music will contribute in more than just creating tools for media production that facilitate peer-to peer education: "That'll be a really important part of our future, breaking down the information silos in the music industry and encouraging everyone to become more open and collaborative." Cherie adds.

There's a certain element of 'taking the control back' within this. Cherie hopes to assure the artists that they hold more influence than they think: "Certainly, in the streaming industry, there's increasing consolidations dominated by Spotify and other big tech businesses. Royalty rates are going down but it's all going downhill! -- so we're giving artists the ability to comprehend the variety of alternatives. We're equipping artists and the others around them with the ability to think more entrepreneurially."

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Cheire says that the expression "community of practice" originally meant professional community, however it could also apply to communities of creativity for example, as we have here. For Water and Music the exact goal is to promote the music industry and it's all down to a personal reason. "I'm inspired by my work due to the fact that I played piano. I spent lots of playing with classical musicians, but I love being around all kinds of artists as well as hearing their thoughts about where technology is heading," Cherie continues. "Hopefully that whatever information that we share can help the artists and teams better understand technology, to enable them to make cool art!"

Through the rabbit hole

The company's latest deep-dive research sprint has been into the chaos of Web3 which is the concept of the next technology of the internet based upon blockchain technology. "We're looking to comprehend what's the State of the Union for tech trends in music, especially the ones that have a lot of noise," she explains. "Web3 is the perfect example, because there's so much confusion and no one knows exactly how it's all happening. This is the most absurd tunnel and it keeps going down. It's as if, "What's happening? ?'!"

In the music industry Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest concerns is fan sentiment. "I consider that to be the top reason that lots of artists are not doing NFTs right now: because of fear of backlash from fans," she muses. "We produced a study on concerns about Web3. Of course, in the world of music, there are lots of concerns about licensing and IP (IP) with NFTs. It's a whole chapter!"

The tlg9Yi9H8w9qUpATyR6 The Water and Music meetup at the NFT.NYC conference

The next collaboration report in the community is in the process of being completed. "We're researching even more nebulous issues right now, such as the metaverse, whatever that means!" Cherie jokes. "We're not even trying to build anything right now; we're trying to determine the opinions of people about it, and also what they have a hard time understanding." The book includes interviews with artists, startups' founders, as well as industry experts regarding their definition of the concept of metaverse, and what they're hoping to accomplish in it, and also what's proving to be problematic.

Cherie mentions that the goal is to combine this research with building online tools to solve these problems. "We did this with some Web3 themes that we already have, like second-hand sales of music using NFTs and shares of royalties. A few smart contracts say 10% to 20% of all secondary sales will go to the artist who originally created it and lots of users see the idea as a profit. The reality is that the majority of NFT's do not result in a secondary sale," Cherie explains. Cherie believes that the value lies in the direct relation and the connection that an NFT represents, not in the opportunity to having something to continue selling in the future.

In addition to the report, Water and Music will be building a tracking dashboard where the users are able to input their NFT collection to determine whether there were any further sales and if so and how the NFT is performing in the marketplace. "We want to build more interactive tools. It's similar to interactive data journalism especially for musicians, since they're probably the ones who are thinking the most about releasing and pricing their NFT drops. We're developing essential frameworks and tools to help people do this analytical work by themselves."

Conflicting visions

Cherie notes that some terms in these newer ones become more complicated instead of clearer, with time "For the metaverse, for instance, there's an enormous disparity between the way the metaverse is historically, and how it has conceptually been defined, from earlier in the '60s." She elaborates her Water and Music team is creating a framework to understand traditional definitions of the metaverse as well as how they can bridge the gap between belief and actuality.

"The early sci-fi novels which mentioned the metaverse contained a grand vision of interconnected virtual and IRL worlds. The world is so far from that right currently. However, at the same time there is a trend in the world of music, artists are saying "I've launched my own metaverse!' when they are really talking about a virtual world.

"There is a direct conflict between visions of the metaverse," she adds. "You are dealing with Meta [Facebook's holding company] as well as Epic Games on one side Both are centralized and one entity owns everything however, there's the vision of a Web3-forward multi-layered metaverse, with interoperable assets and identities. It makes sense to try at least experimenting with blockchain, and the roles it plays in facilitating this, however it directly opposes Facebook's stance."

Cherie says that the metaverse has "just turned into this vague word which anyone can use to the benefit of their own" and she would like to cut through the clutter. This is in perfect alignment with Cherie's raison d'etre: Water and Music analyzes and critically look at the topic, and then provide actionable knowledge to guide people on about how they should react. It has practical applications in addition, like providing assistance to artists and their staff when they are evaluating working with specific metaverse-based platforms.

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

Cherie closes in usual fashion by encouraging collaboration among the Water and Music community. "In the coming months, we'll be rolling out interviews with artists as well as platforms and startup founders. The metaverse research will probably continue through the end of summer and into fall and so if people are interested in getting involved with the metaverse, contact me. If you have suggestions of people to talk with, I'm open for suggestions!"

For more information, you can join us on Twitter. Cherie to get involved, follow her 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.