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Tuesday 7 February 2012

Backplane To Hold Music Hackathon At SXSW, With Top Industry Managers As Judges


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A few weeks ago we wrote about Backplane — a platform for creating interactive, highly visual communities — that counts Lady Gaga as one of its backers, along with plenty of the Valley’s most well-known investors.
Now the company is harnessing its star power to hold a unique (and potentially awesome) event at SXSW: the SXSW Managers Hack — a hackathon that will be judged by some of the most accomplished managers in the music industry, including: Scooter Braun, best known for facilitating Justin Bieber’s rise to fame; Jay Brown, President of Jay-Z’s Roc Nation; and Troy Carter, manager of Lady Gaga (Carter is also one of Backplane’s cofounders).
Developers are being asked to hack together “apps, platforms, and technologies designed to advance the future of digital music distribution” — where they’ll be judged by the people who actually decide which apps and platforms their artists will use. In order to attend the event, you’ll need to apply for an invitation, which you can do right here.
The event will take place on March 11 2012, from 2 PM til 10 PM, and will also be live streamed by R to Z Studios, Randi Zuckerberg’s new social media firm (she’ll be hosting the stream as well). Note that while the event will revolve around music, it’s being held during the ‘Interactive’ portion of SXSW (SXSW Music begins on the 13th).
Music-themed hackathons have been held before (check out Music Hack Day if you’d like to find one that’s coming up in your area), but the presence of top industry managers at this one will likely help make it especially interesting. It’s also another sign that the industry recognizes the potential that startups and hackers can bring to the table — which is a lot better than the innovation-squelching lawsuits that the record companies have slung around before.
The event also fits in line with Backplane’s stated goal of attracting the best developers around (they’ve previously discussed their aim to foster an engineering-focused culture).
Oh, and Backplane fittingly promises that ”live music and DJs will jam throughout” the hackathon.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/06/backplane-to-hold-music-hackathon-at-sxsw-with-top-industry-managers-as-judges/

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