FastForward partners with Warner Music Australia & Songkick for hackathon challenge

FastForward: Sydney, Warner Music Australia and Songkick are calling on creatives to register for their ultimate music x tech hackathon challenge.

The challenge involves creating a new product to push and explore the boundaries of artists and their fans – to create an experience that merges creativity and technology.

“The idea is that we’re looking to bring music technology and fans together in one game-changing application, and we want people to show us how they can do that using the API,” says Simon Cahill, WMA’s head of digital and business development.

“The Songkick, Spotify, and other API’s out there like Facebook or other, to bring it all into one.”

The winner will receive $5K cash, as well as a 15-minute spot at the upcoming FastForward: Sydney conference, which runs April 12 to April 13.

Applicants are required to use either the Songkick and/or Spotify API.

The following criteria must also be met:

• Needs to be related to, and/or work mainly in music;
• Needs to create a genuine connection to an audience;
• Needs to stand out. There is a tonne of great music tech out there – what makes yours different?
• Needs to be fully functional, and platform agnostic. Usable by anyone, at any time, on any device;
• Needs to use either the supplied Songkick or Spotify APIs

“Tell us something we don’t know about our fans, so that we can help our artists communicate better with their fans,” said Cahill. “That is the single driving vision behind this.”

The judges are Cahill, Spotify director of label relations Australia & New Zealand Tom Mee, Comes With Fries director Vanessa Picken, Songkick director of marketing Aaron Neigher, FastForward founder and media insight consulting CEO Chris Carey, and Warner Music Group UK SVP digital Emmy Lovell.

FastForward and WMA will provide some of the best APIs for applicants, which will become available along with datasets once registration is complete.

Registration is open between now and 6pm Wednesday April 4. Registration is open here.