Member Connections
At Water & Music, we believe peer-to-peer learning and knowledge-sharing are vital ingredients for innovation. To enrich our research, we regularly engage our members through executive interviews, sentiment surveys, product demos, and IRL events. This not only gives our membership a window into the latest music-tech trends, but also improves our work by establishing an ongoing feedback loop with our community.
Event Recaps
A snapshot of the burgeoning market for music NFTs, social tokens, and DAOs, featuring thousands of token drops from nearly 1,000 unique artists and music brands.
- Lessons from our inaugural Wavelengths Summit
- Attack / Decay / Research / Release: Mapping community with FWB
- From ZKPs to the future of music/Web3: What we learned at DevCon
- The artist team, today & tomorrow: Takeaways from W&M Summer School 2022
- Wavelengths 002: Web3 for whom?
- Wavelengths 003: Crafting superfan experiences, from the physical to the digital
- What it really means to be “fan-first”
- Balancing niche and mainstream on the road to Web3 adoption
- Music copyright fundamentals (with Dani Balcells and Chris Cooke)
- Wavelengths 004: Building sustainable music communities
- Wavelengths 001: The state of music curation and discovery in Web3
- The root of the music NFT problem (CO:QUO panel recap)
Community Synthesis
Need-to-know takes on the future of music, crowdsourced from the Water & Music community.
- Web3 music strategy in a bear market: Tips from our community
- Web3 and music rights: Our community weighs in
- Sidechain: Music NFT streaming apps under fire, FTX fallout impact, and songwriter challenges in Web3
- Sidechain: Web3 presave strategies, the death of FWB Local, and influencer disclosures
- Sidechain: Future Tape joins Zora, new music/Web3 protocols, and new case studies in royalty-backed NFTs
- Community Barometer, Q2 2022: The future of work
- Sidechain: Venice, Warner Music, and more cross the Web2/Web3 bridge
- Key takeaways from our discussion on avatar rapper FN Meka
- Muse's NFT album becomes first to hit the UK charts — but does it land?
- The music metaverse is not free from red tape
- Scaling music/Web3 will take a village
- The music industry reacts to the bear market
- The music NFT pricing debate
- The “TikTokification” of the music industry
- Should we stop using the term “music NFT”?
- Discord digest #044: The piracy-to-Web3 pipeline, TikTok's role as a record company
- Discord digest #043: Major-label dominance of Spotify playlists and “10k NFT projects”
- Discord digest #042: Web3 data portability, artist metaverses and the “intricate house of cards” of streaming economics
- Discord digest #041: Decentralized curation economies and fizzling metaverse hype
- Discord digest #040: Spotify's latest Loud & Clear report and NFTs as a back-catalog strategy
- Discord digest #039: UnitedMasters x Yuga Labs and the “real” value of streaming
- Discord digest #038: E-commerce for superfans
- Discord Digest #037: Epic’s Bandcamp acquisition and Web3 “innovation-washing”
- Discord Digest #036: Ye’s Stem Player and fraud as a Web3 feature
- Community Barometer, Q1 2022: Our pulse on Web3, community-building and more
- Discord Digest #035: The Spotify drama continues, plus tips for touring in the age of COVID
- Discord Digest #034: Our HitPiece teardown
- Discord Digest #033: Spotify’s music/podcast clash
- Inaugural Barometer Survey: The most pressing issues in music and tech right now
- Discord Digest #032: Web3 as an “exit strategy” for artists
Member Interviews
Conversations with founders, creators, and business leaders on the cutting edge of industry innovation.
- Ed Newton-Rex (VP Audio, Stability AI) on building the next wave of music AI tools
- Michael Pelczynski (Forms + Shapes) on what we get wrong about streaming economics
- Srishti Das (Founder, Hivewire) on music strategy for emerging markets
- Andreea Gleeson (CEO, TuneCore) on music distribution in an AI-first world
- Building a new AI music format, with Bronze CEO Lex Dromgoole
- Jessica Powell (Co-Founder/CEO, Audioshake) on music startup challenges and the “new possibilities” with music AI
- Amber Atherton (investor, author) on building virtual communities: Start small and niche
- Alex Brees (Founder/CEO, un:hurd) on streamlining marketing for independent artists
- The latest music AI tools in action from Never Before Heard Sounds, Harmonai, and more
- Community Member Q&A: Andres Botero, Manga Creative Studios
- Community Member Q&A: Josh Dalton, Serenade
- Community Member Q&A: Dave Godowsky, Head of Artist and Industry Relations at iZotope
- Community Member Q&A: Michail Stangl, Head of Culture at Zora
- Community Member Q&A: Jennifer Bonita, Senior Manager, Artist Relations at Yousician
- Inaugural Community Member Q&A: Tim Shiel, broadcaster, musician and producer