Music collective “NEXTWORLD” is cultivating a safe space for Fil-Am and other Asian-American musicians in their local LA scene – but what does the future have in store for them?
When asked to define what exactly “NEXTWORLD” was, NEXTWORLD President Brynne Matuan chuckled. “Kai and I get this question a lot, we sometimes don’t know how to answer it because the answer will vary all the time.”
His hesitation to answer the question is not unfounded; what started as a small collective of artists headed by Matuan and CEO Kai Caden, otherwise known by their artist names Brynne and KU-KAI respectively, has begun to steadily flourish into an ever-growing online community. “We’ll give artists connections to PR, press, production – music resources, like learning how to mix and master,” Brynne lists.
As president of the collective, Brynne primarily serves as the liaison between the existing collective and potential new members; he’ll spend a good part of the night sitting in a Discord voice chat, strengthening his bonds with current members and introducing new members to the community simultaneously. “There’s a big focus on community and making sure artists and musicians know how to navigate the music industry,” Brynne asserts. “I don’t want to limit the growth of artists I want to bring along to just people I meet in person.”
Florida-based artist mica yui was one of said people Brynne hadn’t met in person. “I met Brynne in July of 2023 and less than a year later, I spent my entire life savings to meet these people.” Yui attributes this relatively radical decision to the sheer sense of belonging he felt NEXTWORLD had fostered: “NEXTWORLD, out of anything, is a community. It has been a place for me to feel connected with people I have never met — complete strangers. It’s such a well-built community that these strangers feel like lifelong friends.”
However, Yui’s decision to fly out to California was not purely based on a whim. In July of 2024, the NEXTWORLD collective hosted its biggest event to date: a headlining showcase held at the Paramount LA. Five artists, Yui included, performed for roughly 120 people that night. However, it was the artists’ varying followings and styles that felt reflective of NEXTWORLD’s nature as a whole. One artist, HOHYUN, had already amassed nearly 200 thousand monthly listeners on Spotify and had just finished a headlining show the week prior. Another artist, chtha, made his live show debut that night, pairing his silky-smooth vocals alongside Brynne to perform a rendition of the pair’s original song: “love is a crime.”
However, while the collective has started to spread its outreach to east-coast based artists such as mica yui and chtha in recent years, further growth of the collective is held back by two large components: time and resources.
“Most of the people running NEXTWORLD, including Kai and I, [are] college students or have jobs,” Brynne reveals. “Having to balance our academic and music lives, that’s applicable to almost every member of NEXTWORLD.” While the collective has been able to manage and execute various projects at a semi-professional level, including video shoots and live shows, Brynne states that any NEXTWORLD project must be planned at least six months ahead of time. “Video shoots (specifically) are definitely limited to more DIY; we can’t really rent out a space unless we have the funding to do so.”
This lack of funding is not uncommon to the average streaming artist either. Digital Service Provider (DSP) powerhouse Spotify has come under fire in recent years for not offering livable wages to the majority of professional artists, who Spotify categorizes as artists generating more than $1000 annually. According to music statistics site “The Forest,” more than 90% of Spotify’s professional artists made less than a living wage in 2022, not counting the 9.2 million “non-professional” artists who generate less than $1000 annual revenue through the platform.
This trend corroborates with information presented in music blog “Groover Blog,” in which writer Michael Murtagh reported how artists are faced with the grim option of either “risking a miserable income and instability in the hopes of ‘making it on your own’ vs. a more regular and reliable source of streams via working with a big label, the downside of course being the miserable share of royalties.” Murtagh further iterates that “the precarity involved with pursuing music as a full time career means it is almost certain that artists will end up effectively taking on 2 jobs until it becomes feasible to live from their work.”
Independent artists like those who make up the NEXTWORLD collective often struggle to pursue music fully through financially stable means. But while the factors affecting artist payouts unfortunately fall out of the hands of the artists themselves more often than not, NEXTWORLD plans to reach out to more potential artists while increasing its national presence.
After the summer 2024 show at the Paramount, Brynne and Kai had a serious conversation regarding the future of NEXTWORLD: how exactly would the collective move on? The two eventually found an answer:
“Whatever we want, we’ll just do it.”
Brynne explained how this philosophy was largely the foundation behind the collective’s formation in 2021. “NEXTWORLD isn’t supposed to only do concerts, or only do video shoots, or only do artist marketing – no, it’s whatever we feel like doing.” This sentiment is largely reflected on how the collective has operated in recent years: Kai reported to music blog BiasWrecker that despite his tendency to not stay up late, Kai chose to shoot an impromptu scene for one of Brynne’s music video and stay up until 3am editing it, all before a 9am class the following day.
Group photo of NEXTWORLD following the Paramount LA Summer 2024 performanceThe artists in NEXTWORLD, if anything, choose to define what their artistry looks like to them. Mica Yui stated that while he has plenty of unreleased music he could simply throw out into the world, “if [he’s] gonna throw music out, it’s gonna be the way [he] wants to do it – and what [he wants] to do is go all out with it.”
This sense of individuality is electric, and through the collective’s collective efforts, it’s slowly creeping its way over from LA towards the east coast. While the collective itself is largely made up of college students and part-time employees, NEXTWORLD has still managed to establish its presence in the local LA music scene through sheer passion and raw expression of musical individuality. And, personally – I’m excited to see where they go next.