Music Ally

UK newspaper The Guardian is to host the first ever Music Hack Day this weekend, with 200 participants monkeying about with APIs provided by several online music firms.

It’s being organised by SoundCloud’s UK manager Dave Haynes, and his company will join 7Digital, BBC Music, Echo Nest, Gigulate, Last.fm, People’s Music Store and Songkick in opening their full APIs up to the attending developers. Attendees will work through the night to prototype and build new projects based on the APIs from these sites, with prizes awarded to the best examples.

“It’s time for the music industry to start working with web technologies and innovation, not against it,” says Haynes. “Instead of suing the people coming up with the most popular new music apps, we should be embracing them.”

It’s the highlight of MidemNet Day Two! I’m contractually obliged to say this. It’s the Music Ally / MidemNet New Business Showcase, which spotlights seven of the hottest new music startups, and gets the audience to vote on which is most exciting.

Or, as I’m renaming it this week, it’s the ‘can six innovative music startups possibly prevail in an audience vote against a lightsaber-shaped gadget that lets you scratch Jimi Hendrix tunes?’ contest. You’ll see what I mean.

The startups are Catch Media, Passionato, SoundCloud, The Echo Nest, MPTrax, Instinctive, and a device created by an industrial design student at the Eindhoven University of Technology. That’s the lightsaber thing…

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