David Noël

Interviewing @JohnDBritton from Twilio/NYHacker about Music Hack Day

New York City hackers, get ready! On February 12-13, Music Hack Day is coming into town.

Twilio’s Developer Evangelist and NYHacker lead John Britton just announced the very first New York City Music Hack Day. If you’re a music- and sound-loving hacker based in NYC and interested in actively participating in a weekend filled with music, love and API’s, register now, it’s free to attend.

The venue is still TBA, we hear it’s awesome.

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The Barcelona Music Hack Day is a go, this is the SoundCloud and Citysounds.fm delegations checking in.

More photos. via soundcloud

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

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Here’s the hack from last.fm’s own web head Matt Ogle, called HacKey. Enter your last.fm username and it will look for patterns in the keys of your favorite songs.

Apparently, I’m an A major.

Click the pie to listen to the songs.

Connected to a computer, this radio streams music via Citysounds.fm and the SoundCloud API. Switching frequencies and you’ll get tuned in to a different city. Total win!

The only hardware hack from Music Hack Day in Stockholm was built by Simon and Robert. They took apart a Panasonic radio, replaced a couple of parts and added an Ardunio Mini to have the radio tuned in to the same frequency.

More photos.

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Holodeck lets you create an artist web presence in no time, pulling your data from the services you already use, like Tumblr, SoundCloud, Last.fm and Songkick.

This looks so cool. Created by the awesome Winston Design folks.

Note: the app still has a few glitches so be sure to keep checking back.

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by Paula Marttila

Current view. Unreal.

via Gernot

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My City vs. Your City

This is the first version of one of the hacks being built during Music Hack Day Stockholm. The cool part is that the hacked Michael Schieben couldn’t be here because of a canceled flight but is participating remotely from Hamburg, Germany.

The hack pulls the Last.fm Metro Charts and compares the most popular artists by city. Check it out here and play around.

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We’ve got company. Batman just got in and parked his ride in front of the Music Hack Day venue in Stockholm. For real.

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We hack by the river!

This is the view from the Music Hack Day Location. Stockholm is so awesome, nevermind the -20°C/-4°F. Definitely coming back in spring.

Lots of great companies here: Last.fm, Spotify, Songkick, Playdar, Sonos, Echo Nest and more.