CC: A new product focus for music/Web3, plus industry-wide metaverse and LatAm roles

By: Brooke JacksonAmani RobertsCherie Hu

Published: 2022-10-24

CC: (“Career Connections”) is a new, collaborative editorial vertical about the future of work in the music business. On a biweekly basis, our research team highlights the most interesting jobs emerging in music — “interesting” defined as involving new technologies, skill sets, strategic priorities, and cross-industry synergies like in gaming, fitness, and podcasts — as a vector for charting potential futures for the music industry as a whole. We compile the jobs we feature in a spreadsheet, which you can view here.

Why look at jobs as a source of data? By watching employment activity, we can uncover the strategic directions and macro-level trends behind a variety of companies around music and tech. Sometimes we spot new departments and verticals for music companies, and other times we see new music- and audio-related job postings for companies not historically associated with these areas. This view offers a unique glimpse into what is coming ahead for the music and tech industries at large, while also offering actionable guidance around the kinds of skills and experiences that are increasingly in demand for music/tech careers.

As a community benefit, CC: will also round up new opportunities for work, collaboration, and funding being shared within the Water & Music network of music/tech innovators and entrepreneurs. You can view the full feed of our community-curated opportunities in the #asks and #jobs-funding channels in our Discord server, and/or suggest interesting hiring trends for us to highlight in this planning thread in Discord.

Help us with this newsletter! We are seeking Water & Music community members to help this series in various ways. If you have any interest in helping to write this newsletter,curating the interesting jobs database, or in supporting a sponsored jobs board, please reach out to Cherie Hu or Brooke Jackson on our team!

Music/Web3 product and community skills in high demand

Relevant roles:

In September, we wrote about the emerging emphasis on “community” in role titles across numerous job postings. This trend continues to sustain momentum as we approach 2023, and community management jobs in music continue to multiply, especially in Web3 circles.

This momentum perhaps suggests a shared understanding among music/Web3 companies that participants of a given artist/fan community prefer to invest their money and time after becoming recognized members. The days of transactional connections between brands and users within Web2 are quickly disappearing, with long-term relationships coming to the forefront. That said, balancing community and business incentives over time is a tricky art and science — mastery of which will only increase in demand as Web3 technology becomes more mainstream.

In this vein, the Community Manager position at social token startup Roll — used by artists like Harrison First ($FIRST) and labels like Leaving Records ($GENRE) — seeks an individual who can “best use Web3 monetization infrastructure of social tokens to align interests of creators and fans in a completely new way while potentially extending to DAO-driven community platforms as well.”Meanwhile, the community-focused platform Geneva is looking to give a face to their Web3 community by establishing a “first touchpoint with Geneva for web3 groups and communities.”

The Web3 community members who chose to invest their time and money in NFTs are also expecting a valuable product in return. The actual product experience must be seamless and high-quality with minimal technical issues to compete with preexisting Web2 options for music consumption, ecommerce, and fan engagement. The peer-to-peer nature of blockchain technology also arguably heightens fan expectations when it comes to accessing exclusive content, access, and privileges that have traditionally been difficult to acquire. Combining the needs of hungry and loyal fans with a seamless onboarding and user experience around Web3 will be a major technical challenge, and likely one of the next big unlocks in scaling the technology to a mainstream audience.

Citing the goal of building the future in fandom, the Tom Brady-led team at Autograph — which counts several entertainment heavyweights including Spotify CCO Dawn Ostroff, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, and Cameo CEO Steven Galanis on their Board of Advisors — is on the hunt for an Senior Product Manager (Platform) to “bring order to chaos – consolidate understanding between multiple stakeholders into a cohesive fan-forward product strategy” (emphasis added). The team at Medallion, which has worked with the likes of Sigur Rós and Tycho on their Web3 strategies, doubles down on the thought process around balancing multiple stakeholder needs within the description for their open Senior Product Manager position — stating the ideal candidate will “work with internal stakeholders, creators and fans to contribute to the product strategy and understand how Medallion can best meet its goals.”

These roles exemplify how fans are evolving into teammates and quasi-peers in Web3 from a product perspective, with product managers juggling artist aspirations and fan desires while trailblazing at the forefront of  music/Web3 app development.

Hiring continues for the music-focused metaverse — especially gaming and AR/VR

Relevant roles:

In the months following our Season 2 report on music and the metaverse, metaverse-related hiring across all kinds of music companies has only picked up.

Financial experts are defining the metaverse as a $2 billion opportunity for record companies by the year 2025, and we’ve observed that record labels continue to create teams to further establish themselves in the ecosystem. Rather than being left behind, labels are looking to become early experts on several new artist-centric, metaverse-related revenue streams that offer rare ways for fans and artists to engage within a digital world.

Interestingly, many of the metaverse-related roles we’ve found are being positioned as focused on commercial opportunities, rather than on artist services. Metaverse-related roles at both The Orchard and Warner Music Group (WMG) are reporting to their respective New Business departments, and require significant contacts and experience in gaming. WMG specifically requires that an applicant for the Senior Director, Metaverse Development has held “a senior level position at a games developer or studio and understand building out marketing and audience strategies.”The major label has been very active in both Web3- and metaverse-related sectors over recent months, including a partnership with virtual gaming world The Sandbox and participation in a strategic funding round for Authentic Artists, a music platform that claims to power “metaverse-native virtual artists, digital collectibles, and interactive music experiences.” They also recently brought on Mike Shinoda on board as their in-house Community Innovation Advisor.

Sony Music highlights an emerging issue regarding music in the metaverse in the Director of Business & Legal Affairs description, by stating a qualified candidate will “provide legal advice on commercial opportunities in a vibrant and evolving digital landscape. Think NFTs, DAO, Metaverse, etc.” The emergence of the metaverse has highlighted numerous issues with the current copyright laws worldwide, and companies are working to retain as many resources as possible for present and future clients. In a recent interview with Music Business Worldwide, Deborah Mannis-Gardner compared the new era of the metaverse in terms of clearances to the “early 1990s when hip-hop artists were struggling to legitimize sampling.” Eventually, a new licensing framework came to light, and a similar journey is on the horizon for the metaverse, with major labels competing to be first movers.

More than a year after our collaborative spatial audio report, Apple is still going full steam ahead on spatial audio — notably, across multiple devices beyond just mobile phones. They recently integrated their spatial audio features into Mercedes Benz vehicles natively for the first time ever, and are hiring for spatial audio-related roles in an AR/VR context, including an AR/VR Spatial Audio DSP Lead and AR/VR Audio Software Engineers.Ironically, Apple CEO Tim Cook has not embraced the metaverse as a concept, but is laser-focused on AR. As he was recently quoted as saying on a European tour: “Zoom out to the future and look back, you’ll wonder how you led your life without augmented reality.”

Latin American music takes over more than the charts

Relevant roles:

Given that Bad Bunny is on track to be Spotify’s most-streamed artist globally for the third consecutive year, and that Latin artists in the US will generate more than a billion dollars in 2022, it’s not a surprise to see so many new music-industry roles have a direct focus in Latin America.

What stands out is the mix of record labels and big-tech companies hiring for these region-specific roles — and the tiptoeing of big-tech teams into traditional label functions like A&R and marketing services. TikTok owner ByteDance is hiring an A&R Manager whose primary responsibility is to “identify, sign, and develop new Puerto Rican artists across music genres”; TikTok specifically is also hiring a Brand Partnership Manager to be based in Mexico City. Amazon Music is bulking up their staff in the fast-growing sync category, seeking “a Sync Licensing Executive to join our Content Acquisition Team to support clearances for Latin America.”

The specific Latin American focus of these music-label and big tech jobs is a continued trend that merits watching closely. It perhaps highlights the ongoing shift in power and influence to non-English speaking, non-US based consumers and artists in music and entertainment, especially as streaming services continue to scale globally.

In other news: Are pay transparency laws an upcoming win for the music industry?

In a recent Discord discussion in the #career-connections thread, we discussed a new law passed on September 27, 2022 in California, which mandates companies with more than 15 employees disclose pay ranges starting in 2023.

The law will directly impact the hiring at music and technology companies at major talent hub cities including San Francisco and Los Angeles. In New York, a similar law was passed in June and is awaiting a signature from Governor Kathy Hochul. There is some skepticism whether this will be a net positive or net negative for workers in these States. On one hand, the law on pay transparency is aimed at eliminating unfair pay gaps and discrepancies; on the other hand, it also has the potential to affect remote job opportunities.

In the time since a similar law passed in Colorado, numerous remote job listings have already stipulated that the “role is not eligible for hire in Colorado, USA” (including a handful at Spotify). This precedent begs the question: Will upcoming job listings that fall under the new laws in California and New York also exclude professionals in those states from applying? The robust talent pools in these States will likely force employers to comply with the pay transparency with every job listing, particularly remote opportunities targeting workers in these areas.

Many professionals in the job market may not be aware that additional states, including Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada, Rhode Island, and Washington, have similar laws recently passed regarding pay range transparency. Importantly, potential applicants can request a salary range, and employers must provide that range in many of the States listed above. Also, a provided salary range can be wide enough that disclosure may not actually address closing the pay gaps as the law intends.

Have any thoughts on pay transparency? Join us in #career-connections to continue the discussion!

Community opportunities

The following job opportunities were posted by Water & Music members in the #asks and #jobs-funding channels in our Discord server from September 21 – October 23, 2022. If you’d like to share a job opportunity with our community, please hop into that channel and we’ll make sure to include it in our next digest.

If you’re not in our Discord server, please connect your membership account here, which should automatically give you access.

(Please note this is NOT sponsored — just community members helping each other out!)

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