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The R2vgOULNXVhGzUq5YeQ Cherie Hu of Water and Music discusses Web3 at Consensys 2022

Water and Music, the newsletter as well as the research DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) building the innovator's guide to the world of music was established to encourage conversations between music tech professionals. The company is now taking it one step further, actively engaging the industry's mind to create research projects and to reward the people that is involved.

"My  reason for having this membership is helping people understand the world better, and also to understand their own place in the world," begins Cherie Hu, founder of Water and Music. Her goal is to aid people to get the best possible education so that they are able to make the greatest impression on the people in their field. One of her main mantras that she has used, particularly in the realm of business reporting, has written in a way that is actionable. "At the end of reading any article, you'll have an idea about what you can do in your industry or how you can improve your job. Making sure that you are able to bridge the gap between what people in the community require, as well as the content we write about is crucial," Cherie explains.

Nowadays the Water and Music team has grown to hold regular 'research sprints' lasting up to 10 weeks where they select a specific topic in order to gather as much data as they can to help their customers. For these research sprints, after they've decided about a subject then they head out to talk to members of the Water and Music community: "We seek out 'What's your current concerns?' then we ask the community to provide the responses. Our report comes directly from those needs," she tells me.

As is the norm, Water and Music research sprints are extremely collaborative and team-based. "It's an ideation process that is bottom-up and we involve a lot of individuals to assist with the editing research," Cherie says. To date, this Water and Music community has issued two papers under the collaboration arrangement. In keeping with the trend, they offered NFTs retroactively so that anyone who were interested in supporting their research they were able to - and those revenues were split fairly among all contributors. "It's clear to me that the result of that research was so superior to if a singular person tried to research everything. It would be impossible to make the work complete!" she smiles. "It's made me believe in the potential of not only linking people, but also synthesising collectively information."

Regaining power

"It's more of an academic concept, however I believe it really applies to Water and Music: we're an ensemble of practice," Cherie continues. "The term was introduced in the year 1991 by cognitive Anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger]. It represents a group of people who not only have an interest in common in the same subject, but are also gathered for the sole purpose of learning how to do something better."

The author explains that this could be the case for people working from the same field, or in similar roles across sectors. They communicate frequently, and also exchange information. Water and Music will contribute to this by producing tools for media production that facilitate peer-to peer education: "That'll be a really important part of our future, breaking down the data silos within the world of music, and encouraging people to be more cooperative," Cherie adds.

There's an element of 'taking control back' with this. Cherie wants to reassure musicians that they are more in power than what it appears: "Certainly, in the streaming world, there are growing consolidations that are which are led by Spotify along with other tech giant businesses. Rates of royalties are dropping but it's all going downwards! We're offering artists the ability to comprehend the wide range of alternative alternatives. We're helping artists and individuals around them to be more innovative."

Sux3d7DLXXZZHfaqDqtw7 The Water and Music team

Cheire clarifies that the phrase "community of practice" initially was a reference to professional groups, but it can also be relevant to creative communities, such as here. In the case of Water and Music the exact goal is to promote the music industry which is the personal motivation. "I'm driven by this job since I was a child playing piano. I spent much of my time around classical musicians however, I am a fan of engaging with artists of all genres as well as hearing their thoughts about where technology is heading," Cherie continues. "Hopefully, whatever knowledge we put out there helps artists and their teams better understand technology, and they'll be able to use it for creating cool art!"

Through the rabbit hole

The company's most recent deep-dive analysis has focused on the chaos of Web3 which is the concept of the next generation of the internet built upon blockchain technology. "We're trying to figure out how to understand the State of the Union for the latest trends in technology in the field of music, particularly ones that can be very loud," she explains. "Web3 is a perfect illustration, because there's so much noise; no-one knows how it's all happening. This is the most absurd web and the rabbit hole just keeps going down. Then it's like, "What's going on ?'!"

The music industry is Unsurprisingly, among the most pressing issues is the fan's opinion. "I believe that's one reason why a lot of artists are not doing NFTs right now: because they fear the backlash of supporters," she muses. "We have released a report about concerns around Web3. In the music industry there are many concerns around licensing and intellectual property (IP) with NFTs. It's a whole chapter!"

Tlg9Yi9H8w9qUpATyR6b It was a Water and Music meetup at the NFT.NYC event

The next collaborative report within the community has already begun. "We're looking into even more mysterious topics now, for example the metaverse, however that's defined!" Cherie jokes. "We're not even trying to build anything right now; we're simply trying to understand what people think about it, and also what they are confused about." The publication features interviews with artists startup founders and industry professionals regarding their definition of the concept of metaverse, and what they are trying to achieve in it in addition to what's becoming difficult to solve.

Cherie mentions that the goal is to integrate this study by creating online tools that solve these problems. "We tried this on a couple of Web3 themes that we already have, like second-hand sales of music using NFTs as well as shares of royalties. Certain smart contracts stipulate that 10 to 20% of all secondary sales should go back to the original artist and many users are communicating the idea as a profit. However, my opinion is that the majority of the NFT's aren't generating a secondary sale," Cherie explains. She says that she thinks the value lies in the direct relationship and connection that the NFT symbolizes, not an opportunity to sell onwards again after.

In addition to the report, Water and Music will be developing a tracker dashboard that customers can enter their NFT collection to see if there have been any other sales or, if there have been what the NFT has moved through the market. "We want to build interactive tools that function as interactive data journalism specifically for musicians as they are probably the people who are thinking the most about publishing and pricing their NFT drops. We're building crucial frameworks and tools that will help people do this analytical work themselves."

Conflicting visions

Cherie observes that certain of these newfangled terms have become murkier and less clear as time goes by "For the metaverse for example, there's a huge gap between how the metaverse has historically and conceptually been defined, from earlier in the '60s." Cherie explains her Water and Music team is creating a framework to understand historical definitions of the metaverse as well as the gap between expectations and actuality.

"The early sci-fi novels with a metaverse reference had an expansive vision of the interconnectedness of virtual as well as IRL worlds. It's a long way from that right today. However, at the same time within the music industry, artists are saying "I've just created my own metaverse!' when they are really talking about an imaginary world.

"There is a direct conflict between conceptions of metaverses," she adds. "You can find Meta [Facebook's holding company] as well as Epic Games on one side they are both centralized, with one company owning everything and everything else. But then you have the concept of a Web3-forward multi-layered metaverse, with interoperable identities and assets. It's logical to at least experiment with blockchain, and the roles it has in supporting this, however it directly contradicts Facebook's approach."

Cherie says that the metaverse "just been transformed into a nebulous term that anybody can utilize for their own benefit" and she would like to break through the confusion. This is in perfect alignment with Cherie's purpose: Water and Music can critically and analytically dig into the issue, and be able to provide practical knowledge to guide people on what to do. These are real-world applications also, for instance, aiding artists and their teams when they are evaluating partnering with certain metaverse-based platforms.

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 out interviews with artists, platforms, and startup founders. Our research into the metaverse is likely to continue throughout the end of summer and into fall and so if people are keen to be involved in the metaverse, contact me. If you have suggestions of people to talk with, We're open to suggestions!"

For more information, you can follow 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.