The music industry should learn from #MusicHackday
Inside the Radialsystem V in Berlin, one of the city’s “new spaces for the arts”, the second Music Hackday has begun. There’s a real buzz of excitement within this diverse collection of people, some traveling from as far away as Boston, Stockholm, London and Amsterdam, who have just 24 hours to conceptualize, build and present the best possible ‘music hack’.
This is a new type of event for the music industry. Sessions are focussed on talks about APIs and technology and the mood is refreshingly upbeat. You won’t find any long-winded panels about ‘Music 2.0’ or the death of the traditional music industry here: the participants are too busy swapping ideas, sharing code and building the future using blocks laid down by companies like SoundCloud, Songkick, 7digital, Last.fm and The Echonest. The hackers are also joined by music software companies such as Ableton and Native Instruments: hardware meets software meeting the web, all connected via music.
