Continuing Water & Music’s exploration of the legal maze around music and Web3, this article takes a closer look at nascent smart-contract developments around collaborative splits for Web3-native music releases.

RAC DAO is the community of holders of independent electronic artist RAC’s eponymous social token, $RAC. In February 2022, he worked with HIFI Labs to launch a custom web portal known as “racOS” for his Web2 fans to claim $RAC tokens and access token-gated tracks and other exclusive content perks down the line. That same month, $RAC also became the first artist social token to be available on Coinbase Exchange.

Mudd DAO is a self-described “decentralized, community-run record label at the forefront of collaborative creation and generative music.” The long-term vision of the DAO is to help more collaborators make more music together than ever thought possible through generative creative techniques, and to give that music a platform via decentralized distribution infrastructure.

This breakdown is part of an ongoing, members-only interview series focused on artist and label DAOs, as part of Season 1.5 of our ongoing collaborative research on music and Web3.

Lifting the veil on our process of putting together $STREAM Season 1 and highlighting what did — and didn’t — work about our highly emergent, agile approach to research.