Two music hackathons in NYC next weekend ….
Next weekend, (starting friday, June 28th) there are two music-related hackathons in NYC. First up, there’s The Hamr
Hacking Audio and Music Research (HAMR)
Organized by Colin Raffel is HAMR: Hacking Music and Audio Research. This hackathon is focused on music research with a goal of testing out new ideas rather than making a finished product. The focus of HAMR is on the development of new techniques for analyzing, processing, and synthesizing audio and music signals. HAMR will be modeled after a traditional hack day in that it will involve a weekend of fast-paced work with an emphasis on trying something new rather than finishing something polished. However, this event will deviate from the typical hack day in its focus on research (rather than commercial) applications. In addition to HAMRing out work, the event will include presentations, discussions, and informal workshops. Registration is free and researchers from any stage in their career are encouraged to participate. Read more about Hamr
The other hacking event is Music Education Hack
Music Education Hack
The goal of the Music Education Hack is to explore how technology and help transform music education in NYC schools. Hackers will have 24 hours to ideate, collaborate and innovate, before presenting their work to a panel of esteemed judges for a grand prize of $5,000. The Hacker teams will have access to New York City teachers as part of the creation process as they focus on building products that incorporate music and technology into the education space. For more info visit the Music Education Hack registration page.
Infinite Jukebox on iOS
What’s nearly as anticipated as the re-release of Arrested Development? Why its the release of Infinite Jukebox for iPhone. I’ve finally started coding it and have something to show. Here it is running in the simulator:
And on my device:
There still a long way to go, but progress is being made. No tricks here, Michael. Illusions.
Update: Here’s Monday’s coding update .. now with fancy animations (as suggested by Ajay)
And the O Awards Nominees for Best Music Hack are …
I was pretty excited to learn that two of my recent music hacks have been nominated in the Best Music Hack category of the MTV O Music Awards:
Other nominees include The Leap Orchestra, Ian Rogers’s Maebe and Tweet Concrete. If you are so inclined you can head on over to the O Awards site and vote your favorite music hack.
Jennie takes over the Internet
My daughter Jennie made a hack last week at Hill Holliday‘s TVnext Hack. She won her category, and ultimately went on to win the grand prize. She got lots of prizes including multiple iPads, Rokus boxes, Apple TVs, lots of money and even Viggle Points. Eliot wrote a really nice article about how Jennie found herself at the hackathon and how she managed to win it. Since then it has been a rather crazy week for Jennie. She’s received multiple internship offers, a number of interview requests and an offer to help market her hack. Today, her story got picked up by Mother Jones which has opened the mainstream media floodgates. In the last 24 hours there have been stories in: US News and World Report, The Los Angeles Times, Huffpo, CNET, Hollywood.com, Dailydot, The AV Club, IMDB, Turnstyle, The Mary Sue (The Geek Guide to Girl Culture) and Wil Wheaton! More to come tomorrow. Yes, it is a big day for Jennie – she had her last AP Exam of high school (Calculus), she got her birthday present (an iPhone), and she was interviewed for NPR Morning Edition (expect to hear her tomorrow morning Update – it is here). Her next life goal is to get more twitter followers than her friend Andrew (@ambushsabre). It’s a lot for someone just two days shy of her 18th birthday.
(Note, Jennie has never ever seen The Empire Strikes Back).
Update: A few more stories: Today, The BBC, NBC News, The Hollywood Gossip, Buzz 60, FastCompany, Let’s get Digital
Update (May 11) – as I write this, a Good Morning America camera is filming Jennie typing on her computer. She has had recent appearances in: slashdot, Marketplace, Aljazeera, AP (Wire service), lots of foreign news sites from Romania, Sweden and France. Here’s a photo of the Good Morning America shoot:
Update: 5/12/2013 – Here’s a screengrab of the Good Morning America piece.
The Curation Station
I’ve spent the weekend on the 35th floor of a very fancy office building in the heart of Boston hacking on the TV at Hill Holliday‘s TVnext Hack. My hack is called ‘The Curation Station’. It is a tool for helping music curators pick new music for TV shows. Here’s how it works:
The curator enters the name of the the TV show – the app then uses either the Rdio or the Watchwith API to find music that has played on those shows. The curator is then brought to the curation screen where the song collection can be visualized and previewed along any of 16 Echo Nest parameters such as energy, loudness, danceability, artist hotttnesss and so on.
You can click on any particular song, inspect all of its attributes You can use this to explore the collection and to find new music that matches the mood or style of show. If you like a particular song, you can ask to see and hear more new music like that song. If you like one of the recommended songs you can save it for future use. You can try the app out here: The Curation Station
I’ve enjoyed the weekend at TVNext hack. It was a really nice event – with all the best amenities for hacking. Well done all!
A quick hack to explore gender and music
Given that it is a holiday today, I only had a short amount of coding time this morning. Still, I built something that is pretty fun to play with. It is a little tool that lets you explore gender and music. With the tool, you can search for Rdio playlists via keywords and the app will give you the gender breakdown of the matching playlist creators. For example, if you type in ‘exercise’ the tool finds the top 200 playlists with exercise in the title and gives you the gender breakdown like so:
You can use the tool to explore gender biases in music. Some examples:
- 90% of Bieber playlists are by female listeners
- 81% of heavy metal playlists are by male listeners
- 61% of love playlists are by female listeners
- 70% of driving playlists are by male listeners
- 70% of cleaning playlists are by female listeners
- 95% of coding playlists are by male (!) listeners
- 100% of Mamma Mia playlists are by female listeners
- 88% of frat playlists are by male listeners
The tool was built using the superduper Rdio API. Try the tool out here: Gender Bias in Music
Getting the Hotttest Artists in any genre with The Echo Nest API
Posted by Paul in code, The Echo Nest on March 29, 2013
If you spend a few hours listening to broadcast radio it becomes pretty evident who the most popular pop artists are. You can’t go too long before you hear a song by Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, Bruno Mars or P!nk. The hotttest pop artists get lots of airplay. But what about all the other music out there? Who are the hotttest gothic metal artists? Who are the most popular Texas blues artists? Those are the kind of questions we try to answer with today’s Echo Nest demo: The Hotttest Artists
This app lets you select from among over 400 different genres from a cappella to Zydeco and see who are the hotttest artists in that genre. The output includes a brief bio and image of the artist, and of course you can listen to any artist via Rdio. The app is an interesting way to explore all of the different genres out there and sample some different types of music. The source is available on github. The whole thing including all Javascript, html and CSS is less than 500 lines.
Try out the Hotttest Artist app and be sure to check out all of the other Echo Nest demos on our demo page.
