Paul
I'm the Director of Developer Community at The Echo Nest, a research-focused music intelligence startup that provides music information services to developers and partners through a data mining and machine listening platform. I am especially interested in hybrid music recommenders and using visualizations to aid music discovery.
Music Hackday Boston t-shirt design challenge winner!
We received a dozen or so entries in the 24 hour challenge to design a t-shirt for next week’s Music Hack Day Boston. There were some really fantastic submissions. We’ve chosen a winning design:
The design was created by Jocelyn Petko, a designer from Alburtis, PA. Jocelyn specializes in print, illustration and packaging. Jocelyn’s design life started as a sandwich artist:
If I learned anything from my humble beginnings as a sandwich artist, it is that to craft a successful sandwich, you need the proper ingredients. One can say the same for a successful designer. You start with a dash of talent and skill. You add a dollop of creativity and imagination. Top it off with a generous portion of persistency, with a side of bacon, and you’ve got yourself one delicious designer.
Jocelyn in one of her quieter moments
Thanks to everyone who participated in the challenge. All the designs really were fantastic.
Some like it loud …
Posted in code, The Echo Nest, web services on October 6, 2010
One of the nifty features that we’ve rolled out in the last 6 months here at the Echo Nest is an extremely flexible song search API. With this API you can search for songs based upon all sorts of criteria from tempo, key mode, duration. You can use this API to do things that would be really hard to do. For example, here’s a bit of python that will show you the loudest songs for an artist:
from pyechonest import song as songAPI
from pyechonest import artist as artistAPI
def find_loudest_songs(artist_name):
artists = artistAPI.search(artist_name, results=1)
if artists:
songs = songAPI.search(artist_id=artists[0].id, sort='loudness-desc')
for song in songs:
print song.get_audio_summary().loudness, song.title
Here are the loudest songs for some sample artists:
- The Beatles: Helter Skelter, Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Metallica: Cyanide, All Nightmare Long
- The White Stripes: Broken Bricks, Fell in love with a girl
- Led Zeppelin: Rock and Roll, Black Dog
We can easily change the code to help us find the softest songs for an artist, or the fastest, or the shortest. Some more examples:
- Shortest Beatles song: Her Majesty at 23.2 second
- Longest Beatles song: Revolution #9 at 8:35
- Slowest Beatles song: Julia at 57 BPMs
- Softest Beatles song: Julia at -27DB BPMs (Blackbird is at -25DB)
I think it is interesting to find the outliers. For instance, here’s the softest song by Muse (which is usually a very loud artist):
We can combine these attributes too so we can find the fastest loud Beatles song (I feel fine, at -7.5 DB and 180 BPM, or the slowest loud Beatles song (Don’t let me down, at -6.6 DB and 65 BPM).
The search songs api is a good example of the power of the Echo Nest platform. We have data on millions of songs that you can use to answer questions about music that have traditionally been very hard to answer.
Music Hack Day Boston tee-shirt design challenge!
We love the Music Hackday Tee-Shirt. But we need a new design! So, in the tradition of the Music Hack Day you have 24 hours to hack the tee-shirt and come up with a new design. If we chose your design we’ll give you credit on the Music Hack Day Boston web site and you’ll have the joy of seeing 200 hackers wearing the fruits of your labors.
Here are the requirements:
Create a one or two-color design and submit it as an EPS by email to paul@echonest.com by 5PM EDT October 6. If you have any questions, just leave them in the comments here.
Update: Here’s an EPS of the Music Hack Day Logo.
Update 2: Dave points to even more logo resources
Using bad reviews to sell stuff
Posted in recommendation on October 5, 2010
Here’s a ‘sponsored link’ purchased by Amazon on the popular social news site Reddit. The text of the ad is a excerpt from Roger Ebert’s scathing review of the movie Caligula (the review opens with “Caligula is sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash” and it goes downhill from there).
I found it a bit curious to see Amazon using such a horrendous review in an ad, but those folks at Amazon are clever. The ad has over 300 comments by Reddit readers meaning that many thousands have probably clicked on the ad to see which movie Ebert was talking about. Hundreds of comments, thousands of visitors all from a 10 word excerpt of a scathing review of the movie. Not too shabby.
Update – the commenters point out that the sponsored link is not purchased by Amazon but by Reddit user qgyh2 who makes money via Amazon’s affiliate program. As Dan says – “he picks headlines that are likely to encourage people to click on the link and then he makes money from whatever they buy while they are at Amazon.” So, qgyh2 is the clever one (but Amazon gets cleverage points for encouraging this kind of stuff via their affiliate program).
Update 2 – flx points out that qgyh2 actually works for Reddit. Here’s more info – ‘He’s helping us experiment with new ways of supporting the site. We weren’t really ready to announce this one yet, or even decide if it’s going to be a permanent fixture. When we do, there will be a blog post about it.’
On the trail – Mount Eisenhower
It’s been a good hiking season so far this year. I’ve spent 4 of the last 5 Saturdays on the trail (the weekend trip to London for the Music Hack Day kept me off the trail one weekend). Yesterday Jennie and I climbed Mt. Eisenhower, one of the southern presidentials in the White Mountains here in New Hampshire. It was a very rare day for the southern presidentials, the entire ridge was in the clear, with great views in all directions.
On the trail
Worst weather in America, but not today
Walking the ridge. Fall colors are already out in the North Country
Above treeline, with a view of Mt. Washington
At the summit. Cold, windy, with great views.
After the hike we popped over to the base station for the cog railway that goes to the top of Mount Washington.
The Cog Railway
The Music App Summit
Posted in events, The Echo Nest on September 20, 2010
The Music App Summit being held in San Francisco is just a couple of weeks away. At the summit, Billboard will be presenting the first ever Music App Awards that highlight the best and most innovative mobile music apps. The finalists are:
Best Music Engagement App:
Tap Tap Revenge 3
SoundHound Infinity
Mix Me In2 Taylor Swift
Best Music Creation App:
LaDiDa
AmpliTude iRig
MorphWiz
Best Music Streaming App:
Rhapsody
MOG
Thumbplay
Best Touring App:
Live Phish
R5
Bonnaroo
Best Artist-based App:
Linkin Park 8-Bit Revolution
I Am T-Pain
TouchChords: Jimmy Vaughan
Best Branded App:
50s Sound Lab
ZOOZbeat Sprite
Gibson
The summit includes lots of good speakers too, including keynotes by:
Janus Friis, Co-founder, Rdio, Skype, Kazaa, Joost, Atomico Ventures
Evan Harrison, EVP Clear Channel Radio, President Clear Channel Radio Digital
Jim Lucchese, CEO, The Echo Nest
Jim has worked in digital music strategy and corporate development for about 10 years. Before The Echo Nest, Jim was a music lawyer at Greenberg Traurig, specializing in music and digital media deals. Prior to GT, Jim held sales and corporate development positions at Hughes, where he managed market development and sales with annual revenues exceeding $20 Million.
Matt Murphy, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Matt Murphy is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers where he manages the iFund, which focuses on defining applications for the mobile internet. Matt is either a Director or works closely with the management teams of Shazam, shopkick, Ocarina and others. Previously, Matt was a board observer at Google and a Director at Peakstream and Dash Navigation
Dave Stewart, Producer, Solo Artist and Mobile Music Consultant/Evangelist
Ge Wang, Co-Founder, CTO, and Chief Creative Officer, Smule and Assistant Professor of Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics
Ge Wang is the Co-founder, CTO, and CEO of Smule, a developer of interactive sonic media. Smule’s bestselling iPhone and iPad apps include Glee, I Am T-Pain, and others. Dr. Wang is an assistant professor at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. He is chief-architect and co-creator of ChucK audio programming language, and founding director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) and the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO).
If you are interested in going, you can sign up here – and if you use the registration code SPMEL you will save $100.
Do you do Music Information Retrieval?
Posted in code, ismir, Music, music information retrieval, The Echo Nest on September 10, 2010
We’re ramping up hiring at the Echo Nest. We’re looking for good MIR people at different experience levels to help us realize the company’s vision of knowing everything about all music automatically. I would guess that we are the closest analog to ISMIR in the industry– we only do music (audio and text), the base technology is straight out of our dissertations (brian, tristan) and we’re active in conferences and universities. We work with an amazing amount of music data on a daily basis and we sell it to some great people and companies that are changing the face of music.
MIR-background candidates are especially encouraged to apply as long as you have relevant experience and want to work on implementation at a very fast growing startup. These are almost all full time positions in our offices near Boston, MA USA. Even if you’re not graduating for a while let us know if you’re interested now.
More info at: http://the.echonest.com/company/jobs/
Group coding session at The Echo Nest
Even without Zooey, Music Hack Days are pretty awesome
Posted in events, Music, The Echo Nest on September 9, 2010
Paul + Matt @ The Hub - Photo by Thomas Bonte
This picture represents the perfection of the Music Hack Day. Here I am sitting at my computer, in a dark room, totally focused on building my hack, while I sit next to the music technology superstar Matt Ogle of Last.fm. In front of me is a beer, a red bull and a glass of Ben Fields‘ private stock. What could be better than this! (Well, I suppose sitting on my right, just out of view could be Zooey Deschanel, that might be better). If you want to find yourself in such a position, then consider signing up for one of the upcoming Music Hack Days. There’s one in Barcelona on October 2,3 and there’s one in Boston on October 16, 17. Registrations are going fast, so sign up early to guarantee that you’ll have a seat.
Last.FM’s Listening clock
Posted in Music, visualization on September 7, 2010
Nifty new visualization at Last.fm that shows the time of day when you listen to music:
Music Hack Day London
Posted in code, events, fun, Music, The Echo Nest on September 7, 2010
I’ve just returned from my weekend in London where I participated in the Music Hack Day held at the Guardian Offices in London. The event was attended by nearly 200 hackers who spent the weekend learning about new music technologies and then using those technologies to build something new. This was a fantastic event that seemingly went off without a hitch. The internet worked, there was plenty of coffee, sodas and beer, and it was a very comfortable space to get stuff done. And people got things done – over 50 hacks were built – Here are some of my favorites:
Speakatron – A program that looks at you through your web cam and plays a sound when you open your mouth. It can tell what shape you’re making and how high your mouth is on the screen as synthesis parameters. This one was the big crowd pleaser. Here’s a pic of Marek giving his demo:
Photo by Thomas Bonte
Future of Music 2010 – Brian Whitman presents the best music recommendation technology ever – Future of Music (2010)” is a Mac OS X app that scans your iTunes library and computes the music you are not supposed to listen to anymore based on your preferences. It then helpfully deletes it from iTunes and your hard drive. Skips the recycle bin. Just like other recommender systems, it uses a lot of fancy math (and data from Echo Nest and last.fm) that really doesn’t matter in the end. Just click the button and let it take care of your life. Yes, indeed, this app erases the music from your hard drive that you shouldn’t be listening too.
Future of Music 2010
Lazy DJ – LazyDJ is an app for lazy DJs who do not want to think about what song they should play next.
Radio 1 Playlist Squirrel – Using small woodland animals to help discover music. You have to see it to understand it. Great demo. Hope they put it online, because, really the world needs more music discovering squirrels.
Photo by Thomas Bronte
Radio Map – a real time browser for on-line radio – Sebastian Heise and Michael Hlatk analyzed the audio for hundreds of Internet radio stations and built a visualization of the Internet radio space that lets you browse for stations based on music similarity.
Photo by Thomas Bronte
Auto Score Tubing – this is an amazing hack – using score synchronizing tech from Queen Mary’s music researchers, the folks from Musescore creates a hack that automatically synchronizes a music score with a youtube performance of that score. Check out the video, it is awesome.
BumbleTab – a very patient guitar tutor – waits patiently for you to play the right notes, then stiches all of your right notes into an awesome song:
Piracy – Making music piracy more like real piracy… Think Geocaching for music…
MashBox – a community driven mashable jukebox – which you can use to make mashups like Beat and Whip It. There’s a nifty prezo on the process they used to create the mashup.
Earth Destroyers – this is my hack – it is a web app that tells you which bands have earth destroying tours.
It is almost like being there:To get a taste of what it was like being at the Music Hack Day be sure to check out Thomas Bronte’s photos of the event – in addition to being the CEO of musescore, Thomas is also an excellent photographer: Music Hack Day London 2010 Slide show
Click to see the Music Hack Day Slide show by Thomas Bonte
Congrats to Dave Haynes and all of the team that put together the Music Hack Day London. It was a fantastic event!
Dave Haynes closes the Music Hack Day
Music Machinery 