Music Hack Day London

UPDATED 2 (links fixed, apps added):

Another Music Hack Day (London) was held this past weekend. Below are the hacks:

• Paul G music-on-hold hack (call his conference number and select the music you want to hear
• Cuttle (access music library on iDevice under iOS 4, and run a live remix using realtime beat tracker)
• Big Piano (inspired by the movie Big - big floor piano that you can make music with)
• Future of music 2010 (a Mac OS X app that scans your iTunes library and computes the music you are not supposed to be listening to anymore based on your preferences, and then deletes it from iTunes and your hard drive)
• Gramophone (browse around the world, pick a month from history and find songs that were played live then and there)
• HOTTTABS (crawls the web for you and retrieve the guitar tabs of the hottests songs of the moment according to their level of difficulty)
• BumbleTab patient guitar tutor (a very patient guitar tutor)
• Daily Sample Set (ruby script that pulls the hottest downloadable uncompressed Creative Commons tracks from SoundCloud within last 24 hours)
• Piracy (android app that allows you to drop tracks from your music collection on your current location, allowing others to grab them if they're close enough)
• Playlistr (imports/exports XSPF playlists, imports tracklists from the BBC Programmes website, links to stream on Spotify and buy from 7digital)
• Disco Snake (play the classic game snake, but you have multiple pieces of food available at any time, and eating a piece of food adds a note to a playing sequence with a pitch and velocity corresponding to the position of the food, and crashing in to your tail results in switching to a new set of samples)
• Singalong (quick access to tablature from your favorite bands)
• Speakatron (a program that looks at you through your web cam and plays a sound when you open your mouth)
• The Cut Liberator (a python script to autogenerate cut up hip hop mixes)
• Roomba Recon (The inspiration for this project is a robot solving a maze. Or cleaning a house. The general idea is to construct coherent playlists that traverse from a start to end song on the Soundcloud with minimal prior knowledge.)
• Webloop_Revisited (The webloop, in its first incarnation remotely presented at music hack day STHLM, is an ongoing experiment in using modern browsers to generate sound. On one hand. On the other hand it tries to find ways to allow people to collaboratively create music.)
• Earth Destroyers (For my London Music Hackday hack I built a web app called 'Earth Destroyers'. Give Earth Destroyers a band name and it will show you how eco-friendly the band's touring schedule is. Earth Destroyers calculates the total distance traveled from the first gig to the last along with the average distance between shows. If an artist has an average inter-show distance of greater than a 1,000 km I consider it an 'Earth Destroyer'. The app also shows you a Google map so you can see just how inefficient the tour is.)
• 7digital Never-ending Popquiz ("Arcade style" never-ending popquiz. Reaching next level will bring new type of questions and they get more difficult with each level. Wrong answers cost you lives. You can choose different genres to play and questions are generated randomly from top artists tagged with this genre. Options for answers are generated from similar artists to the correct answer.)
• 7x7 (a square of 7x7 notes, where the notes can be selected by using the mouse. All notes within the selected rectangle are played, creating various chords. When notes are selected they are played according to an Attack-Duration-Decay envelope, where the user has no control of the parameters.)
• MixCloudPad (a sit back way of enjoying MixCloud content on your iPad)
• MashBox (The user selects a track and the system mixes it with another that is chosen at random (within limits), and uploads to http://soundcloud.com/mashbox)
• SongkickGiglister (An Android oriented Songkick gig lister for people who agree to go to gigs before they've heard the band. Fetches the upcoming gigs for a given user, pulling in data about the bands: links to Spotify, tracks from around the web etc.)
• Accessible music (This hack is a web browser where songs are triggered with mouse over movements)
• MuseScore OSC Remote (several musicians scoring together)
• I was there (tour t-shirts from your Songkick gigography)
• Gowalla for SoundCloud (check in with Gowalla to a particular venue and get a free SoundCloud stream/download)
• Cleversounds (next time you visit a place with a cleversounds jukebox (at the moment, just laptops), you will be played artists that you like)
• Music Mag (create a music magazine from Guardian content)
• The Sound of Tweets (simple web app to turn tweets into pieces of music)
• Swearaoke (this is a game where you play Guitar Hero guitar, and this makes the words to a song)
• Auto Score Tubing (YouTube.com is stuffed with great musical performances. Imagine these videos playing along with the musical score! While manually synchronizing a score measure per measure along with the video is possible, automatic synchronizing would be even greater.)
• The Sound of Data About Justin Bieber (exploring how fan data could be presented not as visualizations, but instead as sounds)
• Political Echonalysis (exploring the style of politcal speech by analysing the audio data)
• Not That Song (add songs from your 7digital locker to playlist that tells you how well those tracks fit together, or not)
• Head Tracking Sound Installation (breakout Game with Procedurally Generated Audio - actions in the game affect the audio output)
• BBC Dance & Electronica Archive & Recommendations (tracklist archives for all dance & electronica shows, finds listed tracks on SoundCloud, after entering your Last.FM username, it recommends artists based on the _complete_ tracklist)
• Mortal Songbat (a musical version of Mortal Kombat)
• Radio Map (sweeping the frequency spectrum on an old analogue radio to the digital web-radio world)
• SoundWheel (Sound Wheel is a circular synthesizer that uses synesthesia and variable intonation to make funky sounding basslines)
• Chatter-FM (call a number and leave a message that will be uploaded to soundcloud)
• Nirtous Oxide (webcam midi controller that tracks colours / fruits)

It's inspiring to see what can be developed in a weekend - congrats to all! While I haven't experimented with any of the above hacks, based on the brief summaries they've provided, my favorites are Disco Snake, Earth Destroyers, I was there, Gowalla for SoundCloud and Mortal Songbat. Btw, if you are not familiar with Music Hack Day, watch these two videos:

Download and Listen to the Entire New Music Seminar

Did you miss the New Music Seminar in New York this week? For only $99, you can stream or downloaded the entire conference (every keynote, panel discussion and presentation).

Note: This is not a re-usable flash drive but an activation key that allows access to this content, and the audio can be transferred to your iPod or other digital music player.

MidemNet Accepting Applications for 2011 Digital Music Innovation Showcase

MidemNet is now accepting applications for their 2011 digital music innovation showcase during MIDEM. If you have a music tech startup, and meet the criteria, make sure to apply, as MIDEM is one of the music industry's premiere events. So apply now, as like the inaugural showcase this year, competition will be significant, and Music Ally will nominate the finalists. For additional information, see their FAQ.

New Music Seminar, NYC: July 19-21

If you're going to be in or near NYC during the week of July 19th, be sure to attend the New Music Seminar, as the event's program looks to be one of their best. To register, go here.

Below is a brief video overview with highlights from last year's event:

Everybody is a Music Maker

Below is Dave Haynes' interesting presentation from TEDxCardiff last month, called Everybody is a Music Maker. Great job Dave!

Future Music Forum

The Future Music Forum in Barcelona this fall looks like a great European event for digital music entrepreneurs, investors, developers and music technology professionals.

Spanning over two-days, the conference will consist of panels, interviews, keynotes and workshops focused on trends, innovations and how music will be shared and monetized.

Some of the topics include: Internet radio, mobile apps and copyrights. Here's the full agenda.

I'll be attending, and moderating the panel on social media as well - looking forward to it!

Live Blogging from UGA's Music Business Program

I'm participating on a panel discussion today hosted by the University of Georgia's Music Business program, and moderated by Bruce Burch. The event is open to the public and will be held at Eddie's Attic in Atlanta; and if possible, I'm going to blog live highlights, so you may see frequent updates to this post beginning in about 5 hours. In the meantime, you can read more about the event here.

update: unfortunately the venue did not provide wireless access so we were unable to do this; hopefully next year

Twestival-fm

This Thursday, March 25, 2010, thousands of people in hundreds of cities around the world will come together at local Twestivals to raise money for education related projects in their areas - from building schools, to supplying classrooms with computers. All of the events are organized entirely by volunteers, and 100% of all ticket sales and donations will go directly to their specific, local educational related projects.

To help raise awareness and donations, SoundCloud has created Twestival-fm, a geographical music site for listening and downloading songs in exchange for donating to this year's Twestival, but they need help from artists willing to donate a song or two. So, if you have some music to promote and a Twitter account then please visit Twestival-fm.

According to Dave Haynes of SoundCloud, "it's really simple, you provide the music and your fans donate. 100% of the proceeds then go to Concern Worldwide, a charity that Twestival chose to support this year's event because of their great work bringing education to the world's poorest children." Hats off to SoundCloud for taking initiative and creating Twestival-fm. Not only are they helping to raise $5,000 for Twestival, but they also have a matching grant too, so every dollar raised from Twestival.fm will be doubled!

This year's Twestival follows the success of last year's event, which was held in 202 international cities to support @charitywater, which assists in providing safe, clean drinking water. Over 1,000 volunteers and 10,000 donors raised over $250k, which resulted in more than 55 wells in Uganda, Ethiopia and India, having a direct impact on over 17,000 people. For more information, follow @twestival.

Free Music Business Panel Discussion April 24 in Atlanta

Save the date for a free music business panel discussion moderated by Bruce Burch of the University of Georgia's Music Business program. The event is open to the public and will be held at Eddie's Attic in Atlanta on Saturday, April 24 from 11am to 3pm. I'll provide more details soon; in the meantime, below are the confirmed panelists:

• James Andrews: managing partner/co-founder of Everywhere Social Media
• Aaron Arnold: CEO of MusicIsMyBusiness, former assistant to Sean “Diddy” Combs
• Mark "Dill” Driscoll: founder of World Sports Promotions, McCann Event Marketing, Momentum Worldwide, Ignition, and Entrepreneur in Residence at UGA’s Terry College of Business
• Chris Esposito: President and CEO of Digital College Network
• Duncan Freeman, founder of Band Metrics
• Tammy Hurt, founder of Outsource Events, Inc, and Placement Music LLC
• Clarkson Logan, co-founder of Maestro
• Richard Nailing, co-founder and CEO of Free All Music
• Doria Roberts, singer/songwriter

Also, I'll be live blogging from the event, and we'll try to provide a live video stream as well.

Next SanFran MusicTech Summit: May 17, 2010

Looks like the next SanFran MusicTech Summit is May 17th. If you've never been before, mark your calendars and plan to attend, as it's arguably the best one day music technology event! In the meantime, follow their announcements and updates on Twitter or Facebook - looking forward to it, and we'll see you there!

Band Metrics Selected as one of 15 Music Tech Startups to Showcase at MIDEM

It's an honor, and I'm humbled as the competition was strong, so my sincere thanks to Midem, the judges and Music Ally for their support! Go here to read the official news release.

If you're going to Midem and would like to meetup, please send me an email.

Projects from Music Hackday Boston 2009

Part hackathon, part music tech gathering, Music Hackdayis an event where participants conceptualize, create and present/demo their music applications all in one weekend. As Music Hackday Boston concludes this afternoon, I've listed their creative projects below - almost 40, which is extraordinary considering they had less than 48 hours, so congrats to everyone - you guys did some great work!

• Paul's Music Wreckommender: an anti-recommender. Give it an artist that you like and it will return a list of artists that are as far away as possible form the original (project page).
• Remix Shell: a simple command shell for Echo Nest Remix one-liners (project page)
• Fugueomatic: Fugues are pieces of music that follow a certain set of rules and a number of voices come in, like a "round", and end up in somewhat different places than where they start out, all the while following a fairly strict and established form (project page)
• EchnoNestLive: EchoNestLive let's producers sample songs in ways they never have before. Using EchoNest's APIs to analyze songs and using Java, Max/MSP, Ableton Live and MaxForLive to play back pieces of a song based on specified pitches, loudness levels, timbres, and other parameters (project page).
• MySpace Hacked V1.0: a user friendly MySpace design/template, that supports the new 360 environment (project page).
• Bricolage v10e-6: The EchoNest Remix API includes functionality to break down a song into short units of sound [segments], and also to measure features on these segments [pitch classes, timbre, and volume are currently provided].  Previous work by Ben Lacker [afromb.py in the echonest remix examples directory] resynthesized a track by mixing in closely matching segments from a different track (project page)
• LastFMD2FWTFBBQ: hacked LastFM and the Topspin applications to show offers from an artist inside the LastFM buy button drop-down menus (project page)
• Playdar SoundCloud resolver: resolves SoundCloud search results for Playdar (project page)
• SoundCloud Paulcast: enables podcasts for SoundCloud resources, both private and public.(project page).
• Noteflight Audio-to-Notation Import: a hack of the Noteflight web-based notation editor to import free-range MP3s on the web into a rough "skeleton" of a musical score, using the EchoNest Remix API to supply a metrical and key signature analysis and some rough notions of pitch and harmony.  The resulting score, when played, follows the score in metrical synchronization with the original audio track (project page).
• Melody Search with Noteflight API hack: a hack to use NoteFlight's embeddable Score Objects to let users pick out specific pieces of a melody to search a large database of scores for similar songs (project page).
• HTML5 <audio annotation: a jQuery plugin that uses the HTML5 media elements API to show elements at certain timestamps during the playback of audio or video media (project page).
• Location-aware Blog-aware Contextual Concerts Listing: create an upcoming concerts listing, specific to the users location, but based off the posting history of a music blog. In essence, highly relevant upcoming concerts (project page).
• Ambient Text Mashup of "HashMap" & "Frequency" for Modest Mouse: The Good Times Are Killing Me: ambient Text Mashup of "HashMap" & "Frequency" for Modest Mouse: The Good Times Are Killing Me (project page).
• MixApp Live Acts Mashup: given an existing social music listening application, add a pane which displays upcoming shows for the artist currently playing, and a link to buy tickets.  Integrate the buy function into the live chat. (project page)
• Sonar: a front-end to control your Sonos multi-room music system that allows you to scan your friends Twitter, Last.FM or other (to be implemented) feeds for music recommendations. We then use Playdar to resolve those songs to playable tracks, and enqueue that music for playing anywhere in your house on your Sonos system. (project page)
• Sonos-Twitter Rewriting: artist, album, and track metadata are conveniently supplied to the Sonos-Twitter service, but they are currently being ignored by the official service.  This hack takes advantage of the metadata and adds rewrite rules which can be shortened in many convenient ways (project page).
• Audio to Midi to Score: using the EchoNest API for audio analysis in conjunction with spectral imaging tools, it's a prototyped audio-to-midi conversion.  The resulting midi file can be played or imported into NoteFlight (project page).
• Amazon EC2 image for music mashup sites: an amazon EC2 image for easy bootstrapping of music- and audio-heavy websites (project page)
• iTunesAirBridge and Playdar AS3 Lib: This project demonstrates using the NativeProcess API to access iTunes via Windows COM.  The demo only contains two commands for retrieving the user's library and playlist.  However, because the iTunes interaction happens via VBScript on Windows (and soon AppleScript on OSX) so anyone can easily extend the library to do more (ie creating playlists, writing a download manager for a music store that imports to itunes) and not have to deal with compiling and scripting C (project page)
• Music-Synchronized Composing Interface Using Echonest API: musicpainter is a collaborative graphical composing environment created by Wu-Hsi where novice users can easily create and share music (project page).
• Outlier FM: Outlier FM is a weekend's attempt to utilize advanced technology to search for beauty and surprise in even the most overproduced of popular music (project page). 
• PartyLister: the PartyLister is a playlist generator built to try out new collaborative playlist generation ideas (project page).
• playdarTunes: playdarTunes allows you to play your iTunes music inside the browser using Playdar. It will open and parse an iTunes Music Library XML file. The music can then be played from a local disk or anywhere Playdar resolves it to (project page) 
• Large-scale similarity using EchoNest: looking at usual patterns in a subspace of the EchoNest dataset made out of 43K songs (project page).
• Cowbot: used the Echo Nest Remix API to extract beat timings, then fed these timings to a servo that plays the cowbell in time with any song (project page).
• Bandsintown City Mixtape: mixtape of artists playing shows in a given city, links to buy tickets through Bandsintown. (project page). 
• Bowie S-S-S-Similarities: I used the Musically Intelligent Machines autotagging api to analyze and tag all of David Bowie's music.  Then I lined it up in order and calculated the similarity between every 10-second clip and every other 10-second clip in terms of the automatically generated descriptions.(project page). 
• Lyric Similator: Lyric Similator lets you explore songs based on the similarity of their lyrics (project page). 
• NPR Tourfilter Mashup: adding NPR stories about music artists to tourfilter's drop-down metadata section for concert listings (project page). 
• Quasiphone: The Quasiphone is a new instrument which uses musical notation in the browser as the controller (project page). 
• DJ Hot Scene: DJ Hot Scene is a hack that pulls MetaData from Native Intruments Tracktor Scratch Pro DJ Tool. The current artist and song is extracted through a faux icecast server (project page).
• Hammond Organ Hacking: Hammond organ "chopping" is an industry unto itself (making large and heavy organs into manageable and modular pieces (project page).
• JamTones on Android: (project page).
• SoundCloud Phanai iPhone App: (project page).
• Living Playlist: The Living Playlist is a real-time, collaborative playlisting web app to encourage social listening through the web (project page).
• Napster Playdar Resolver: Napsdar uses the Napster API to provide access to Napster's streaming collection via Playdar (project page).

This looks like such a good time that I'm gonna try and bring it to Atlanta and Georgia Tech's Center for Music Technology.

Win Seed Capital for your Music Tech Startup

Got a music tech startup or idea that needs capital for a prototype or continued development? Or would you like additional exposure to Angels, VCs and large corporations like Yahoo and Coke? Then consider pitching at Startup Riot in Atlanta February 17, 2010. In its 3rd year, Startup Riot is quickly becoming a significant event for entrepreneurs and investors alike, and this year looks to be the best yet. Here are 5 reasons why you should consider it:

• If your music tech startup is located far from Atlanta, Sanjay is providing a travel assistance fund, but apply early as it will not last long
• They're expecting 100 Angels and VCs from around the country to attend
• Unlike some pitch events, Startup Riot is Free to present and you'll get a Free booth to demo your product as well, if you're selected
• At least $1K investment in the overall winner, as well as an equal amount in services, but Sanjay expects those numbers to grow substantially by the day of the event, and the award will be determined by the audience
• Will be held in the Egyptian Ballroom of the Fabulous Fox Theater, and there will be a great free after party for attendees and presenters

For more information, go here.  Btw, we presented last year so we're not eligible, so no need to worry about hometown competition from us :-)

Recap Links and Photo Tour of the Future of Music Policy Summit

If you missed this year's Future of Music Policy Summit, you can read posts from their live blog, and they've added a few videos and articles here as well. Weathervane also wrote three great summaries about the conference. The FMC Summit was a fantastic event, one of the best music conferences I've been to all year - from the panels to the community, and I'd definitely add it to your list of events to attend in 2010. Below are a few pics I snapped during the conference:

Next SanFran MusicTech Summit Announced

Just noticed the next SanFran MusicTech Summit has been set for this year (December 07) - great news as they were only planning to have one, so mark your calendars and make plans now for the best single day conference of music technology - we'll see you there!

Flux Summit: Electronic Music and Technology Discussion

Interested in the evolving landscape of electronic music (trends, software and tools), and meeting with other DJs and music industry professionals in the Bay area? Then attend the Flux Summit on October 1 - it's a FREE event, but you'll need to RSVP here.

2010 Leadership Music Digital Summit Announced

From March 22-23, 2010, Leadership Music will host its 6th annual Digital Summit in Nashville. Below is a brief overview of the conference, and these are my notes from last year.

• about 1,000 attendees
• 30 percent are executives and management from the majors and indies: record labels, publishers, PROs, marketing companies, etc.
• 30 percent represent artist teams: managers, publicists, attorneys, business managers, fan club managers, outsourced marketers, etc.
• 25 percent come from various media, tech companies, startup entrepreneurs, organization heads, students, academia, etc.
• and 15 percent are artists, songwriters, producers, etc.
• about $200 to attend both days

Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit

If you don't know about the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit, you need to check it out and make plans to attend this October. Speakers include:

• Senator Al Franken
• Jim Griffin
• Ariel Hyatt
• Ian Rogers
• Brian Zisk
• Jed Carlson
• Daniel Ek
• Yancy Strickler 

Topics include:

• The Post-Digital Revolution
• A Musician's Guide to the Policy Landscape 
• The License Clearance Process & Artist Compensation
• Future of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

To view the entire list of panels, speakers and the schedule, go here. We'll be presenting as well, so hope to see you there!

Music and Society: Segmenting your Fan Community

Yesterday I gave this presentation at the C/O POP Music Festival and Conference in Cologne, Germany. Essentially, I explored the relationship between music and society, and how artists can better understand their own fan community through segmentation, which can lead to fan growth and increased revenue for them. Since I had several people ask for a copy so they could see the Facebook example and the resources again, here it is. Btw, Band Metrics will begin providing fan segmentation next week.

Band Metrics Needs Your Help

We're in the running to present at this year's Twiistup, and they're deciding the final spot from the semi-finalists by holding a Twitter contest. All you have to do to vote for us is tweet:  I vote for #BandMetrics to be the 12th @Twiistup Showoff http://bit.ly/nVpt2

You can vote up to three (3) times.

Many thanks for your help!