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

Water and Music, the newsletter and study DAO (decentralized autonomous organisation) developing the innovative's guide to the world of music was designed to help facilitate discussions among people working in the field of music technology. They're now going one step further by actively engaging the industry hive of minds to develop research-based projects, and reward all those that is involved.

"My  reason for having this club is to help people to better understand the world, and also to understand their role in the world," begins Cherie Hu as the creator of Water and Music. She wants to help people be best prepared so they are able to make the greatest impression on the people in their field. One of her main mantras, especially in the context of business reporting, has always written in a way that is actionable. "At the end of every article, you'll get an idea of the best practices in your industry or how to improve at your job. Making sure that you are able to bridge the gap between what members of the community require, as well as what we write about, is very important," Cherie explains.

Today, the Water and Music team has grown to hold regular 'research sprints' lasting about 10 weeks, where they choose a topic to glean as much information as they can to help their customers. For these research sprints, when they've settled on a topic then they head out to speak to people in the Water and Music community: "We inquire, 'What are you currently concerned about?', and then crowdsource the responses. Then the structure of our report is derived directly from these requirements," she tells me.

As is the norm, Water and Music research sprints are incredibly collaborative and community-centric. "It's a bottom-up ideation and we involve a lot of individuals to assist with the editing research," Cherie says. As of now, the Water and Music community has released two reports in this group arrangement. In keeping with the trend, they offered NFTs in retroactive fashion, which meant that if people were interested in supporting the research, they could - and the proceeds were distributed evenly among the contributors. "It's clear for me that the results of the research was superior to if a single person attempted to study everything. It would be impossible to make the work complete!" she smiles. "It's been a great experience for me to see the value of not just creating connections, but more importantly, combining knowledge."

Taking the power back

"It's more of an academic concept, however I believe that it is applicable to Water and Music: we're a community of practise," Cherie continues. "The concept was first introduced in the year 1991 by cognitive sociologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger] and refers to a community of people who not only have an interest in common and passion, but also come together to focus on finding out how to make something better."

The author explains that this could correspond to people from the same field, or in similar roles across sectors. These people communicate regularly, and share knowledge. Water and Music will contribute by not just producing tools and media that facilitate peer-to peer education: "That'll be a really vital aspect of our future, breaking down the barriers to information in the industry of music and encouraging people to be more open and collaborative." Cherie adds.

There's a sense of taking control back' with this. Cherie wants to reassure the artists that they hold more influence than they think: "Certainly, in the world of streaming, there's increasing consolidations that are dominated by Spotify along with other tech giant firms. Rates of royalties are dropping -- well, the trend is all downhill! -- so we're giving artists the ability to comprehend the wide range of alternative alternatives. The artists we train and people around them to think creatively."

Sux3d7DLXXZZZHfaqDqtw the Water and Music team

Cheire clarifies that the phrase 'community of practise' originally was a reference to professional groups, but it can also be relevant to artistic communities like the ones we have here. For Water and Music the exact goal is to promote the music industry, and it's all down to the personal motivation. "I'm driven by this job because I grew up playing piano. I spent a lot of playing with classical musicians however, I am a fan of engaging with artists of all genres and getting their perspective on where tech is going," Cherie continues. "Hopefully the knowledge that we share can help the artists and team members better understand technology and they'll be able to use it to create cool artwork!"

Down the rabbit hole

The company's latest deep-dive study has focused on the mess that is Web3 which is the concept of the next version of the web based on blockchain technology. "We're trying to understand what's the State of the Union for technological trends in music, especially the ones that have a lot of noise," she explains. "Web3 is the perfect example due to the sheer amount of chaos; nobody knows the exact nature of what's going on. This is the biggest rabbit hole and it just goes on and on. And it's like, 'What's going on ?'!"

In the world of music it is not surprising that among the most pressing worries is that of fan-generated sentiment. "I consider that to be the top one reason why a lot of performers aren't performing NFTs right now: because they fear negative reactions from their the fans," she muses. "We produced a study on concerns about Web3. Naturally, in the field of music there are many concerns around licensing as well as IP (IP) as well as NFTs. That was a whole chapter!"

Tlg9Yi9H8w9qUpATyR6b The Water and Music meetup at the NFT.NYC event

The next report that will be collaborative within the community is already in progress. "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 simply trying to understand the opinions of people about it, and also what they are confused about." The publication features 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 says that the aim is to blend this research by creating online tools that solve these problems. "We have done this in the past with a few Web3 topics already, such as secondary sales of music through royalty shares and NFTs. Some smart contracts state 10% to 20% of all secondary sales must go back to the original artist and many users are communicating that as a benefit. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of NFT's don't generate a secondary sale," Cherie explains. Cherie believes the value is more on the personal relationship and connection that the NFT represents, not in the opportunity to having something to continue selling in the future.

Together with the report Water and Music will be developing a tracker dashboard that users can input an NFT collection to determine whether there were any further sales and if so and how the NFT has moved through the market. "We would like to create more interactive tools. It's as interactive data journalism particularly for artists as they're probably the ones who are thinking the most about releasing or pricing NFT drops. We're building essential frameworks and tools to assist people in doing this analysis work by themselves."

Conflicting visions

Cherie observes that certain terms that are new and exciting become more complicated rather than clearer as time goes by "For the metaverse, for example, there's a huge gap between how the metaverse is historically, and how it has conceptually defined earlier in the '60s." She elaborates her Water and Music team is creating a framework to understand historical definitions of the metaverse as well as the gap between expectations and reality.

"The initial sci-fi works which mentioned the metaverse contained an expansive vision of the interconnectedness of virtual as well as IRL worlds. It's a long way from that right now. 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 really mean an imaginary world.

"There are currently two distinct views of the metaverse,"" she adds. "You are dealing with Meta [Facebook's holding company] and Epic Games on one side they are both centralized, where one corporation owns all the assets, but then there is the concept of a Web3-forward, multi-layered metaverse, with an interoperable identity and asset. It's logical to try at least experimenting with blockchain, and the roles it can play in helping facilitate the process, yet it completely is in opposition to Facebook's strategy."

Cherie believes that the metaverse "just become this nebulous word that anybody can utilize for personal gain" and she would like to cut through the nonsense. This ties back in perfectly to Cherie's raison d'etre: Water and Music will critically and analytically look at the topic, and then be able to deliver actionable insights to advise people about how they should react. It has practical applications, too, such as providing assistance to artists and their staff when they are evaluating partnering with certain metaverse platform.

Water and Music meetup at the NFT.NYC event.

Cherie concludes her tour in the usual manner and encourages collaboration in her Water and Music community. "In the coming months, we'll be carrying interviews with artists, platforms, and startup founders. Out research into the metaverse will likely continue into the end of summer and into fall and so if people are interested in getting involved with this, please let me know. If anyone has recommendations of people to talk with, We're open to suggestions!"

For more information, you can join us on Twitter. 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.