CC: Hiring trends across community management, TikTok strategy, metaverse affairs, and more

By: Brooke JacksonDeclan McGlynn

Published: 2022-09-07

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 channels in our Discord server.

TikTok’s rising dominance as a global social platform impacts hiring strategy

Relevant job postings:

TikTok’s growth in relevance and dominance is leading to an influx of TikTok-specific roles within big music and media corporations. This is a notable change from TikTok content and management typically being folded into general “Content Creator” positions or “Social Media Manager” roles. Seeing so many positions being hired specifically for TikTok not only indicates TikTok’s increasing importance in the wider media landscape, but also hints that companies believe that success in managing TikTok content requires specific skill sets that differentiate from other social and video platforms.

For instance, the TikTok-specific roles at the BBC and Happy Studios TikTok-specific roles both reference “young audiences” and “Gen Z.” A track record of appealing specifically to Gen Z seems to be a key part of TikTok content creation, as opposed to previous social jobs that were more generic around demographics.

The new patent for TikTok Music has driven industry-wide speculation around how TikTok will compete for attention and streams with incumbents like Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music. Regardless, TikTok’s music-industry dominance — in terms of driving plays to other streaming platforms and breaking artists, and its seemingly unstoppable rise among Gen Z users — is likely expanding, meaning industries both inside and outside of music will continue requiring TikTok-specific skill sets in hiring.

Meanwhile, it’s worth paying attention to TikTok’s hiring for its Speech, Audio, and Music Intelligence (SAMI) department, particularly around AI and Machine Learning. The short-form video platform has been experimenting with AI music-making, as we highlighted in our recent Creative AI Tools research. The new roles include positions such as Research Engineer in Machine Learning Music, Research Scientist in Music Creation, and Music AI Software Engineer. Keep an eye on our regularly-updated AI tools database as ByteDance’s new AI products launch.

The “community” buzzword crosses over to job titles

Relevant recent job postings:

We’re seeing an increase inCommunity Manager roles across all industries.

We have discussed the buzziness of the word “Community” in many of our articles and research pieces over the past few months — especially in Web3, where the idea of equitably building and monetizing a community through tokens is a core tenet of the technology’s social promise. Community-building has also become part of mainstream marketing and corporate-speak, thanks to the growth of the “Creator Economy” and other changes in the media and publishing landscape.

Brands and media companies are starting to move on from vanity numbers such as “likes and followers,” instead focusing more on a core, dedicated, and engaged audience. For many brands, this shift is not so much a choice but a requirement. as regulations change around privacy in tech, thereby shifting the way brands can target customers. For example, Google’s new third-party cookies rules go into effect over the next couple of years. As brands, platforms and publishers find themselves restricted with who and what they can track via cookies – something iOS already implemented to great debate, and which may be even more regulated with the potentialA2 new American Data Privacy and Protection Act currently being discussed by Congress – the urgency increases to engage the customer beyond mass marketing and scale.

In the years to come, building a community could be as important as starting a social media account for new and existing brands and projects.

Hiring for a new curve in the metaverse hype cycle

Relevant recent job postings:

Mega-talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) hired a Chief Metaverse Officer last month, and is now hiring for a slew of metaverse-specific roles. The newly-created executive role will see Joanna Popper exploring metaverse opportunities for the agency’s long list of clients, which include Beyoncé, Robert DeNiro, AC/DC, Lady Gaga, Kanye West, and many others.

To date, the poster children for the concept of the “metaverse” have arguably been projects from A-list artists who can afford the lofty production and marketing costs that major gaming and metaverse projects require. Concerts from Travis Scott in Fortnite, Justin Bieber in Wave, andBlackPink in PUBG Mobile (recently winning the new MTV Music Awards category of ”Best Metaverse Performance”) are noteworthy examples. We should expect to see more projects from the celebrities represented at CAA, and if successful, we hope other talent agencies will be creating similar roles and departments, especially to help independent artists navigate the landscape.

The custom-built gaming world Roblox is recruiting for talent that “will help Roblox Marketplace to be Web3 ready and support billions of items and transactions to happen both on the blockchain and Roblox.” Late last year, Roblox changed its community standards to reject NFTs within Roblox, though the company has also revealed plans to create “NFT-like” objects on the platform. It appears Roblox is moving forward with on-chain items after all, which could be a major turning point for Web3 onboarding,  as the gaming giant currently touts over 50M daily active users (DAUs). Given the success of artist concerts within Roblox, the music industry should take note of this new development.

That said, according to a recent study done by Bloomberg, new roles across “all industries with ‘metaverse’ in the title declined 81% between April and June.” These roles surged following Facebook’s Meta rebranding last October, and coincide with hiring freezes and layoffs across tech and Web3.
The metaverse concept appears to be following the same Gartner hype cycle curve we covered in our early analysis of NFTs, and may be entering the “trough of disillusionment” now. If the metaverse is to scale the way Meta, Microsoft, and others foresee, popular names and scalable projects that interest many audience members will likely be part of that long-term strategy.

Music/tech layoffs and restructures abound

Q3 2022 so far has seen a slew of layoffs in tech, including significant companies in Web3 (Crypto.com, Coinbase, Robinhood, OpenSea), as well as many other notable players in tech such as Snap.

The music industry is being hit, too. Spotify has slowed hiring by 25%; BMI is cutting 10% of ts workforce, and is no longer considering a sale; SoundCloud is laying off 20% of its workforce as well, citing a “significant company transformation.” SoundCloud in particular has been busy this year, acquiring AI music company Musiio in May and being an early mover in the world of user-centric or “fan-powered” royalties, which they were the first major platform to implement in 2021. Whether these industry-wide layoffs are a sign of more challenging times, or a necessary correction given other macroeconomic forces like crypto winter, inflation, or post-pandemic business needs, is yet to be seen.

Community opportunities

The following job opportunities were posted by Water & Music members in the #jobs channel in our Discord server from August 19 – September 4, 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. (Please note this is NOT sponsored — just community members helping each other out!)

Other resources

There are many other active music-industry job boards elsewhere online that we’d love to shout out as additional resources and inspiration for our community: