Water & Music is growing—and partnering with Hot Pod!
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View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) http://hotpodnews.com/presents.... A Newsletter about Big Ideas in Music and Technology, by Cherie Hu This is a special issue published on May 29, 2019 Happy Wednesday everyone!
Ahead of this week’s official newsletter issue, which will land in your inbox tomorrow, I wanted to share a few exciting behind-the-scenes updates with you.
First off, you may notice that this installment looks quite different from previous ones. That’s because I’ve decided to switch my email service from Revue to Mailchimp—primarily because the latter has better analytics and an integration with Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/apps/mailchimp) . Both factors will be essential for improving and streamlining your experience with the newsletter and its adjacent properties as they continue to grow.
Here’s the new landing page (https://mailchi.mp/9ab07d2b7dc4/waterandmusic) for the newsletter, which provides some additional context on the Water & Music name as well as the voice I’m aiming to adopt in my writing.
Secondly, I’m super excited to announce my first official partner to help take this newsletter to the next level: WATER & MUSIC IS PARTNERING WITH HOT POD!
I’ll be spending a lot of time this year focusing on growing out Water & Music as an independent media ecosystem—consisting of this newsletter, the eponymous podcast, some live events (!) and much more—and cannot think of anyone better to partner with at this stage on the editorial side than Hot Pod News (https://hotpodnews.com) and its founder, Nick Quah (https://nicholasquah.com) .
In case you don’t know already, Hot Pod is a freemium, independent email newsletter about the podcasting and on-demand audio industry. The free tier comes out every Tuesday, is syndicated with Nieman Lab (https://www.niemanlab.org/author/nquah/) and is a must-read for anyone seeking out clear and approachable analyses on WTF is happening with podcasts right now.
Nick has been covering the space since 2014, and has a really smart perspective on the future of digital media that’s expansive, inquisitive and forward-thinking, yet also unabashedly chill. Beyond Hot Pod, he’s a contributing writer for Vulture (https://www.vulture.com/author/nicholas-quah/) , where he writes a mix of podcast reviews and industry commentary, and previously worked at Panoply Media, BuzzFeed and Business Insider.
I’m excited to work with Nick not just because we’re both independent writers, but also because we share really similar perspectives on how technology is transforming media and entertainment. What he’s trying to uncover in the fast-paced podcast world shares a lot of parallels with what I’m trying to do for music—and, of course, those two fields are increasingly blurring together.
The Water & Music x Hot Pod partnership marks the beginning of a potential collective of independent newsletters—similar to the structure of podcast networks like Radiotopia, in which shows each have an independent voice and audience, but collectively share backend and business resources.
SO… WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Nick is going to help me grow the Water & Music newsletter, edit its content and manage its backend. Whenever appropriate, some of the Water & Music issues will be syndicated on his Hot Pod newsletter. Once the Patreon community gets to a certain size, I’ll also be giving Nick a small percentage of membership revenue in exchange for his work.
To be clear: Hot Pod is not acquiring or ingesting my newsletter. I still fully own the newsletter, podcast, Patreon/Discord community and everything else under the Water & Music umbrella, and paying Water & Music members will be treated separately from Hot Pod Insider’s paid subscribers.
Nick will simply be providing a valuable helping hand behind the scenes, and you’ll see a “Hot Pod Presents” logo in the top left corner of each newsletter sendout (including this one).
WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT TOMORROW?
You’ll receive the first official “Hot Pod Presents: Water & Music” installment tomorrow at 12pm ET, and every other Thursday at 12pm ET hereafter.
Content-wise, it’s business as usual: each issue will include a longform essay on music-industry trends, plus adjacent updates on the Water & Music podcast, the Patreon page, my additional freelance articles and my upcoming travel plans.
Tomorrow’s newsletter will give you an in-depth look at one of the unsexiest, yet biggest and most open, opportunities for innovation in the music business: licensing music for background streaming in brick-and-mortar retail stores.
I’ll be unpacking why the seemingly simple sector of B2B music streaming still runs on outdated, legacy practices around the globe—and how a growing number of big tech companies like Apple, Sonos, Anghami and Napster are trying to carve out their share of revenue and innovation in what is poised to be a multimillion-dollar market.
I’m super grateful to Nick for all of his help and support, and am excited to see how our collaboration unfolds! Please let me know in the meantime if you have any questions or feedback about our partnership, or about Water & Music in general.
‘Til tomorrow :)
- Cherie ✨ If you’d like to support further thoughts and conversations on music and tech, I encourage you to become a paying member of the Water & Music ecosystem on Patreon (http://patreon.com/cheriehu?utm_campaign=Water%20%26%20Music&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter) . For as little as $1/month or as much as $40+/month, you can access a wide range of perks including:
- A closed, members-only Discord server, consisting of updates and analysis on the most important music and tech news every weekday
- Voting rights on future newsletter issues
- Exclusive longform essays
- Previews and bonus material for my freelance articles
- Monthly video hangouts with me
- Live meetups and events (forthcoming!!)
…and much more! Thanks so much for reading! ✨
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