The Global Music Hack Day initiative

The first Music Hack Day was organised by Dave Haynes and James Darling and held at the London offices of The Guardian newspaper over the weekend 11/12 July 2009. Since then, this initiative has proved to be a great way to demonstrate the creativity around music that comes from the tech community, fostering cross-platform and cross-device innovation.

In the past six years (from 2009 to 2015), more than 50 Music Hack Day events have taken place around the world, with over 3500 participants who have built over 1300 innovative hacks with the support of about 250 music and technology companies. The events are attended by a diverse range of music and technology enthusiasts who are creating increasingly more interesting projects as each event goes by.

Mission

• To fast prototype and create brand new music apps (web, mobile or physical) in just 24hrs.
• To bring together the music industry and the developer community.
• To highlight and showcase the platforms and API’s of companies working in and around music tech.
• To foster cross-platform and cross-device innovation.

Music Hack Day in Barcelona

The MHD in Barcelona was started in 2010 by the Music Technology Group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. This was one of the most popular Music Hack Days because it is organised as a satellite event of the Sonar+D  – the space for creativity and technology within the pioneering electronic music festival Sonar in Barcelona. Thanks to this collaboration, the companies participating in the Music Hack Day took benefit of the great exposure of this Festival (about 112.000 spectators, 1.352 companies and 921 journalists accredited from 732 media last year 2014) and all hackers enjoyed the concerts and activities included as a reward for the hard work in the hacking session.