Music Machinery

I was going to write a post describing all of the cool looking music-oriented panels that have been proposed for SXSW 2011, but debcha at zed equals zee beat me to it.  Be sure to read Deb’s SXSWi 2011 panel proposals in music and tech post.  Some of the panels I’m looking to the most are:

Digital Music Smackdown: The Best Digital Music Service – In what is expected to be a heated and fiercely competitive discussion, C and VP-level executives from four digital music companies (MOG, Spotify, Pandora and Rhapsody) battle it out over the title of “Best Digital Music Service.  This could be fun if it is really a smackdown, but I suspect that the execs will be very polite and complimentary of each other’s services leading to a boring panel.  I hope I’m wrong.  Also, where’s Last.fm? – they should be on the panel too.

We Built this App on RocknRoll: Style Matters – For an inherently auditory medium, music is ingrained with style. From 12″ artwork and niche mp3 blogs to the latest design on your sweatshirt or skate deck, music has always been analogous with visual culture. So what happens when you overlay this complex fabric of cultural values and personal identities on what is already a thorny process: building and launching a music app. – Hannah of Last.fm and Anthony of Hype Machine talk about the design of music apps. These two know their stuff. Should be really interesting.

Music & Metadata: Do Songs Remain the Same? Metadata may be an afterthought when it comes to most people’s digital music collections, but when it comes to finding, buying, selling, rating, sharing, or describing music, little matters more. Metadata defines how we interact and talk about music—from discreet bits like titles, styles, artists, genres to its broader context and history. Metadata builds communities and industries, from the local fan base to the online social network. Its value is immense. But who owns it? This panel is on my Must See list.

Expressing yourself musically with Mobile Technology – This is a panel with Ge Wang, founder/CTO of Smule talking about creating music on mobile devices.  Ge is an awesome speaker and gives great demo. Don’t miss this one.

Music APIs – A Choreographed Dance with Devices? – This panel discussion focuses on real-world examples beyond the fundamentals or technical aspects of an API. Attend this panel and review success stories from the pros that demonstrate how an API brings content, software, and hardware together. Looks like a good Music APIs 101 for biz types.

I would be remiss if I didn’t pimp my own panels.  Be sure to consider (and maybe even comment on / vote for ) these panels:

Love, Music & APIs. – Consider this to be the Music Hack Day panel. Dave Haynes (SoundCloud) and  I will talk about the impact that Music APIs are having on the world of music and how programmers will soon be the new music gamekeeper.

Finding Music With Pictures: Data Visualization for Discovery:   In this panel I’ll  look at how visualizations can be used to help people explore the music space and discover new, interesting music that they will like. We will look at a wide range of visualizations, from hand drawn artist maps, to highly interactive, immersive 3D environments.

The folks at SXSW are looking for input on these panels to help decide what makes it onto the schedule, so if any of these strike your fancy, head on over to the panel descriptions and add your comments.