This is a web version of our weekly Discord digest, which is designed to aggregate the most important conversations and resources being shared on the Water & Music Discord server, so that you don’t miss out on anything important.

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Welcome to the ___verse

First shared by @cheriehu in #metaverse

On #metaverse (RIP #hyperverse) @cheriehu noted an interesting new trend in popstar superfan offerings: the __ verse:

“new trend i’m seeing is artists launching virtual-world fanclubs in the “____verse” format:

Megan Thee Stallion <> Hottieverse
Dolly Parton <> Dollyverse
Steve Aoki <> A0K1verse
Snoop Dogg <> Snoopverse

and now………. Slipknot <> Knotverse”
– @cheriehu

While the sheer volume of stars joining “the metaverse” may seem like good news to metaverse optimists, @LucasSphere pointed out that many of these metaverse platforms arguably aren’t really metaverses:

“I’m a metaverse and W3 enthusiast. Hell, I built my company around metaverse strategies. But… All these “…verse” plays are interesting. But they are all, essentially, websites, with an added layer of social interaction and potential W3 collection and monetization.

When the “HTTP” and “TCP/IP” of metaverse interaction emerges and we are able to smoothly leap from verse to verse, and world to world, without breaking character/avatar and interaction modality – I think that’s the next seminal step.”
– @LucasSphere

Drawing from one of @cheriehu’s tweets, there is a significant discrepancy between media framing of “the metaverse” as a single unified concept, and the reality of how these metaverse projects are manifesting across a scattershot series of platforms. Even the scope of the companies producing these metaverses vary widely in scope from AmazeVR (Hottieverse) and Blockchain Creative Labs (Dollyverse) to Sandbox (Snoopverse).

This small sample reveals just how fragmented the metaverse market is and the vast range of digital experiences the term “metaverse” can refer to, covering everything from VR concerts (Hottieverse) to Web3-augmented VIP fan experiences (Dollyverse).

Reaching a shared definition of what “the metaverse” actually entails will be one of the key questions facing the music/tech ecosystem over the near future — and it’s also going to be a central topic of our upcoming research season. If you’d like to join our Season 2 brainstorming thread, and help us pin down the key questions the music industry has about the metaverse, you can do so here.

Streaming economics: An “intricate house of cards”

First shared by @Enric Calabuig in #music-streaming

On #music-streaming, we discussed an article by journalist Shawn Reynaldo, from his popular First Floor newsletter. In this piece, Reynaldo makes the sobering argument that listener apathy plays a crucial role in reinforcing the business models of major streaming services, arguing that “many [of their] practices simply wouldn’t be possible if consumers were more interested in the contents of their musical diet.”

As passionate music fans, there’s no denying that we’d all prefer for everyone to have as diverse a musical diet as possible. Still, our community members wondered whether placing the blame on individual consumers — or indeed, on the business models of companies — is a productive way to approach the problem of streaming economics.

“I also sense a bitterness in the article that I’m not sure I share. Sure, most people like convenience at the lowest cost, and value that over investing in artistry or community… But why judge music listeners with other interests and limited budgets for not being purely ethical music consumers? And why judge a corporation with shareholders for trying to make money by understanding how consumers behave? I’m not saying that I like the outcomes, just that I don’t see the point in passing judgment on the behaviors that lead to them once you consider the broader context of everyone’s incentives. If anything, it might make sense to question the globalized capitalist economy, but once we accept that as the underlying game, I’m not sure we can blame anyone for playing by the rules.”
– @danibalcells

Indeed, from SVOD to journalism, it’s challenging to identify any part of our media consumption that hasn’t been affected by the volume-driven, “race-to-the-bottom” style of intake incentivized by platforms such as Spotify.

However, @Jeff Regulion observed that both Apple and Amazon offer music services as a relative niche in their vast offerings. Thus, if they decided to make significant changes to their music streaming models, they may not be subject to the same shareholder scrutiny as the likes of standalone services like Spotify.

Spotify is easily the most influential and recognizable of all the major streaming services, their product and policy decisions often set the tone of the decisions made by other streaming services — to the extent that all the major music streaming services are becoming almost indistinguishable from each other

Regardless of how you choose to diagnose the current problems in the music industry, this discussion is a reminder that no organization makes decisions in a vacuum, and it can be wise to view organizational decision-making within their broader cultural trends and market climate. @Dan Esrich reminded us of the critical role advertising plays in the “intricate house of cards” of Spotify’s business model, highlighting a particularly relevant quote from media studies professor Robert Prey: “Music is marketed to listeners who are, in turn, marketed to advertisers. At the same time, Spotify must attract investment within the finance market. Spotify’s survival is dependent on its ability to successfully stitch together the various markets it operates within.”

The qualms of social data portability in Web3

First shared by @cheriehu in #web3

@cheriehu shared an interesting tweet from crypto founder Ellie Day:

While financial transactions are captured automatically on the blockchain, there’s little provision for capturing the intangible value held in Web3 social interactions — which, by and large, still take place on Web2 platforms like Twitter or Discord.

“I thought this was a rather thought provoking tweet — from someone who I would consider web3-native who recently decided to sell all their FWB holdings. Main takeaway or issue to think about is that the social layer of web3 is still painfully dependent on web2 infrastructure. (I mean… if you’re reading this you’re on discord lol.) little to no social interactions are being captured at the protocol layer.”
– @cheriehu

This void is perhaps incongruous with an ecosystem like Web3 that supposedly places emphasis on ownership, and relies heavily on intangible value and prestige. In an environment that still relies heavily on Web2 attention rails, supposedly “Web3-native” success stories are often attributed as much down to network effects and influencer marketing as to product development.

Many of us noted that there seemed to be a gap in the market for a platform-agnostic protocol layer that could capture data and interactions made within token-gated Web3 communities like FWB. @brodconley even noted that failing to capture this data could result in Web3-native organizations like DAOs losing essential parts of their organizational memory:

“Especially important to be able to log this info when the discussions taking place in Discords are the context layer for DAO votes happening on chain (or off, w snapshot). Archiving the context for governance decisions is essential.”
– @brodconley

However, not all of us shared this view — @aflores argued that FWB members essentially give up the right to the token-gated network once they sell their tokens, and even observed that storing every social interaction on-chain could create some knotty privacy issues:

“i’m way less sympathetic tbh. its not that this person can’t talk with anyone from fwb anymore. like its not like leaving fwb severed their network across twitter, telegram, and discord dms. the connections they valued enough to build/extend outside of the fwb facilitated network remain preserved. the tokens only had value worth selling bc they gave access to something. it doesnt make sense to me to profit off of selling that value and then ask to still not give it up. and again ‘it’ is just the ongoing fwb network of ppl they didn’t build distinct connections with. and i guess hot take, i dont think you should own your social graph in every circumstance. its not like healthcare where those records pertain to you and only you.”
– @aflores

There are two questions at the core of this debate: 1) Is social data portability and ownership necessary, or even the best option, in every circumstance? And 2) Is there a vision that exists for a “web3-native social network” that doesn’t require ownership of financial assets as a barrier to access?

Either way, this is your heads-up to get the email addresses of all your W&M contacts for the next (inevitable) Discord outage.