A Weekend in Stockholm, Hacking Music
Now eat that, corporate web project managers and social media jumbos!
Gather 90 hackers, developers and representatives from music/tech companies from across the world (USA, Austria, Sweden, UK, Germany) in an amazingly cozy venue in winter wonderland Stockholm and let them use available data around music based on open API’s from companies like RjDj, Songkick, Echo Nest, SoundCloud, last.fm and many more to create new things.
The result: 30 new projects/hacks/apps/whatever after only a 24-hour coding sprint. That’s an average of one project per three attendees! Top that with Batman checking in and your weekend is a hell of an epic win of geekiness:
I posted my favorite hacks yesterday during the demos so here’s the short version. Make sure to check them out, some great stuff inside:
HacKey: look for patterns in the keys of your favorite songs (API: last.fm)
At last.fm I can spotify the similar artists (API: Spotify, last.fm)
Radio Free Hackday: a FM radio streaming music from Citysounds.fm (API: SoundCloud)
Holodeck: create an artist website in no time, pulling data from your last.fm, Songkick, Tumblr and SoundCloud accounts (API: last.fm, Songkick, Tumblr, SoundCloud)
Songkick On Tour: connect your Songkick and Dopplr accounts to find shows happening in your city of destination (API: Songkick, Dopplr)
It’s truly amazing to see what people can do in such a short time when they’re talented, smart and share a common passion for music and technology. It’s as un-conferency as it can get. Just a few hands-on workshops and API presentations, no panels and no business cards. Hack Day organizer Henrik once said to an interviewer:
“We don’t watch TV, we code.”
The photo below pretty much sums up the weekend:
Massive kudos go out to Henrik and Mattias for organizing the best Music Hack Day to date. Fantastic lakeside location, non-stop working and fast internet, great food and drinks, free attendance and awesome people all around.
Plus, Stockholm is a great city everyone should visit at one time or another. I’ll definitely be back in the summer.
Make sure to check out all the photos to get an idea about the atmosphere all also have a look at the full list of hacks.
Photos: Paula Marttila, Gernot, David Kjelkerud and Dave Haynes
