Interview: Alix Zerd and Cyril Guiraud, Co-Founders of Global Music Collaboration Platform Everwave
Everwave is a global music production platform amplifying the scale of music creation. Everwave’s initiative is to bring together producers, artists, and fans from all across the world to create a community for collective creativity. The platform provides artists from around the world an open online studio, where they can hop on any “wave,” the starting template for each collectively evolving work.
NxtNow Music connected with two of Everwave’s co-founders, Alix Zerd and Cyril Guiraud, for an exclusive interview to discuss how they initially met and then decided to create the platform, how Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) benefit artists, and much more.
How did you meet each other and what led to the decision to create the Everwave platform?
Cyril Guiraud: I first had the vision for a large-scale collaborative project-a community of musicians, producers, and fans creating a dynamic piece of music together virtually. In the summer of 2021, I met with Alix, Jazzy Couscous label manager and Telcoin co-founder, who helped transform the concept into the basis for what Everwave would become. Not long after, jazz legend and web3 music pioneer Mark de Clive-Lowe joined our team.
Alix Zerd: We met each other while I was living in Taiwan. I was traveling to San Francisco with my wife as we were thinking about moving to the US, and I connected with an alumni from my school who lives there. As I told him about my background in music and blockchain, he told me I had to meet a friend of his, who shared similar interests: that was Cyril. On the day we met, Cyril pitched me “endless wave”, the original concept of what would later become Everwave. At that time, I was doing a lot of research and was very active in the DeFi/DAO space, and his idea struck me as a perfect concept to develop a DAO focused on music creation, something that had never been done before. A few months later, after getting our ideas together, we kickstarted the project and it was on!
How has your prior experience in the music industry played a role in the development of Everwave and determining its market fit?
Cyril Guiraud: I've been involved in music since my early teens, I started playing clarinet and saxophone(s) out of passion and never stopped. I have performed, recorded, and produced many projects of many different styles. I have had the chance to meet and collaborate with amazing music makers and I feel blessed to have the opportunity to connect with many more as we build everwave. Being an entrepreneur at heart I have started and built companies, 2 of which are in music.
doubleOone is a record label with a twist. We invite audiences to record sessions in iconic locations to experience music in a new way. We’ve produced more than 50 public and corporate sessions while releasing amazing music.
Everwave is my latest music endeavor and probably the most utopian of all. It is built around the dream of a global, always-evolving musical “object” for all music makers to create together. It comes from my experience observing and studying the creative process of artists. The idea is that one could be contributing to a piece that evolves beyond his control, where one’s art is contributing to the greater good of collaboration. The technology for music makers to collaborate remotely is now widely spread and we created Everwave to fully embrace remote collaboration both on the production and the creative level.
What would a global music studio where artists from anywhere can contribute sound like?
Alix Zerd: I think by definition, it would be very hard to describe! We are open to any genre, any musician, any instrument. Literally, anything can happen. And this is by design: we are trying to recreate the creative magic that happens in a studio, when someone starts playing something, and it inspires other band members to play along and add their own ideas. Except here, instead of being locally limited to a physical location, it’s like there was a portal in the studio where anyone can teleport from anywhere in the world and come join the jam. It’s turbo-charged serendipity. We expect the unexpected to happen, and so far, we’ve been pretty blessed with the different artists' deliveries!
Do you think that virtual music co-ops are the future of bands?
Alix Zerd: I think bands will continue to exist as we know them. As limiting as it can be, being physically present in the same place, communicating directly with your fellow band members, is something that cannot be emulated with currently available technologies. However, I do believe this will enable people to get together. People who, by lack of connections or physical access, would have not been able to get together and make music together. In that regard, it creates a new branch in the collaborative music-making field, and I think it’s pretty exciting! It’s the continuation of the effect the Internet has in making the world smaller and smaller. Now people who are thousands of kilometers away are able to create art together in a very smooth and fun manner. I’m personally very enthusiastic about this development.
How does a DAO model possess the most benefits for artists?
Alix Zerd: I see Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) not as a revolution, but more as an evolution. We’ve talked about co-op earlier: DAOs are basically on-chain (running on a Blockchain) co-op. So why a DAO? I’ve always seen the music industry structures as very exploitative, so when we thought about Everwave’s concept, there was no way for me that we would reproduce the same broken system. Making Everwave a DAO allowed us to easily distribute the governance and ownership of what we’re building to the people who really create the value of the company: the artists. Sure, as founders, we do bring value in coming up with the original concept and making it a reality, but at the end of the day, Everwave will only be as successful as the music that is produced through Everwave, so it’s only normal artists are being put at the center of it. Blockchain allows us to have automaticity, fluidity, and transparency in how Everwave is run: things that have been badly missing from traditional music industry structures. Those are all the reasons why we think a DAO is the best structure we could use to build a project with the artist's interests at heart.