Berklee College of Music  ·  Boston

Cora
Cao

Music Business  ·  Production  ·  Songwriting

Music × Technology
× What Comes Next

Cora Cao is a Professional Music major at Berklee College of Music, concentrating in Music Business, Music Production, and Songwriting. With a classical piano background that expanded into contemporary music and technology, she independently designs and builds music-related product prototypes — including a Web3 music platform and a voice identity protection tool — grounded in her research on music industry economics and platform dynamics.

Originally from Guangdong, China, she maintains a 3.86 GPA and has earned Dean's List honors across three consecutive semesters. Bilingual in Chinese and English, she brings a cross-cultural perspective to the intersection of music, technology, and the evolving creator economy.

Her interest in protecting artists in the age of artificial intelligence led to Voiceprint Auth, a voice identity protection platform built on blockchain, allowing artists to register and license their voice identity on-chain — making ownership verifiable without storing raw audio.

Cora sees her role in the music industry not as a musician who dabbles in business, nor as a technologist who happens to like music, but as someone who understands both deeply enough to build bridges between them.

Music and Technology

"I came to music through classical piano,
but I stayed for the questions."

Music has always been a technology story. The piano was an innovation. The recording was an innovation. Streaming is an innovation. What changes with each new tool is not just how music is made or distributed — it's who holds power in those systems, and who gets left out.

My work sits at that edge. I build platforms, prototypes, and frameworks for thinking about how music ecosystems could function differently. Not because I believe technology fixes everything, but because the way we design systems reflects what we value — and right now, too many of those systems weren't built with artists in mind.

I'm drawn to structural questions: How do platforms create or extract value? How do independent musicians build sustainable careers in an industry that was never designed for them? What does it look like when the people who make music also shape the conditions under which it travels?

I don't have all the answers. But I'm building toward them.

Education

Berklee College of Music — Boston, MA
B.M., Professional Music  ·  Music Production · Music Business · Songwriting
GPA: 3.86 / 4.0  |  Dean's List: Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025
Expected May 2027

Projects  ↗ View Portfolio

Campus Marketplace Platform — College Flea
Group Project
  • Proposed and led the initial concept of a student-to-student campus marketplace
  • Built a functional prototype using AI-assisted coding tools to demonstrate core features
  • Collaborated with teammates to refine product structure, features, and UX
2025
Web3 Music IP & Digital Identity — Voiceprint
Course Project
  • Developed a concept exploring voiceprint-based authentication for music copyright
  • Analyzed Web3 applications in digital ownership, creator authentication, and rights management
2025
Web3 Music Platform — CCAO
Business Concept
  • Designed a concept-level music platform extending Web3 principles to artist ownership
  • Analyzed monetization paths, platform structure, and market feasibility
2024
TikTok & Music Industry Economics
Group Project
  • Analyzed TikTok's role in music discovery, streaming growth, and artist monetization
2024
Digital Music & Music Business
Independent Research  ·  Presented at ICLAHD 2022
  • Analyzed how social media and short-video platforms influence music marketing and monetization in China
2022

Skills

Music & AudioLogic Pro, Ableton Live
Design & VisualProcreate, Photoshop, Lightroom, Canva
AI & PrototypingAI-assisted coding, no-code / low-code tools
LanguagesEnglish (fluent) · Chinese (native)

Get in Touch

ycao2@berklee.edu

+1 617-697-9054