Latest news with #hackathon
Forbes
4 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Inside Music Biz 2025: AI, Attribution And The Evolving Music Ecosystem
Music Biz Logo This year's Music Biz 2025 conference in Atlanta brought together an eclectic mix of executives, technologists and policymakers to unpack the future of music. If there was one unifying theme across dozens of panels and town halls, it was this: the music industry is not just transforming—it's decentralizing, digitizing and demanding new rules for engagement. The OpenPlay Hackathon: Co-Creating The Future Of Music Tech One of the most compelling examples of this transformation was the OpenPlay x Music Biz Hackathon. Participants used 'vibe coding'—prompt-based AI programming—to rapidly prototype software solutions with tools like Cursor, Lovable, and Bolt. More than a showcase, the hackathon functioned as a collaborative lab for next-gen tools, backed by a $10,000 prize pool. The event exemplified the conference's drive to dismantle systemic silos: 18 companies opened their technology stacks to developers, music professionals, artists, and students who co-created products addressing challenges like rights tracking, revenue attribution, and fan experience design. As hackathon Director, Chris McMurtry explained that for a moment, 'the data silos were truly broken.' Diego Leon, a student based in Berlin, won first place with an app that used Audio Shake and Surreal APIs to analyze audio and recommend rights-holder percentages. Second place went to Serona and Katrina from the Mechanical Licensing Collective for Samplify—an app providing automated analysis for music interpolation and sampling requests. A New Global and Cultural Mandate Conversations around global strategy and diversity — from 'Breaking Borders' to 'Gender Bias in Music Recommendation' — reinforced a powerful mandate for 2025 and beyond: success will require cultural fluency, ethical clarity, and algorithmic accountability. Julie Knibb, Co-Founder of Music Tomorrow, frames it succinctly: 'A model mirrors its data, not reality. Catalogs skew male, so male artists dominate. But listeners often favor artists of their own gender. Hyperpersonalization amplifies this, reinforcing existing tastes rather than correcting systemic imbalance.' This cycle isn't just an ethical concern—it's an economic one. Algorithmic bias determines who gets discovered, who gets paid, and ultimately, what audiences hear next. Whether building localized DSP strategies or correcting systemic bias, the road ahead demands more than just technical agility—it requires intentional leadership and proactive reform. Human First: Resilience, Burnout And Reinvention Mental health wasn't just a side conversation; it was a core part of the conference's ethos. In 'The Moments In Between,' moderators Kei Henderson and Brandie Johnson explored the emotional valleys creatives traverse between high points. Alongside this, 'Money For Something' tackled the economics of burnout—linking poor mental health directly to lost revenues from canceled tours and burned-out teams. The message was clear: supporting people isn't a cost—it's an investment. Independent And Ascending Independents are no longer the scrappy underdogs—they're reshaping the business model. With MIDiA reporting indie market share at 47%, up nearly 10 points since 2022, panels like '47% And Climbing' and 'How To Grow And Stay Independent' zeroed in on how technology and financial innovation are fueling growth. Indie artists and leaders are building companies that scale without sacrificing creative or economic control, often relying on interoperability and direct-to-fan platforms to stay agile and profitable. AI, Attribution And The Age Of Machine Music The influence of artificial intelligence was everywhere—not in theory, but in tools. From the 'AI Town Hall 2.0' retrospective to 'Value Creation In The AI Era,' the conversations focused on tangible innovation. Panels such as 'Attribution First' and 'AI In Music' warned of the dangers of skipping over proper crediting and licensing. and OpenPlay showcased how modern infrastructure can finally close attribution gaps and future-proof revenue flows. Yet ethics weren't far behind. 'The Art Of Licensing' and 'Coding Fairness' examined the deeper philosophical questions: Who owns art in an AI world? What price should creators pay for innovation? These weren't just hypotheticals—they were frameworks for action. Metadata And Monetization: Infrastructure Reimagined Sessions on metadata, rights management and fraud prevention got into the technical weeds while doubled down on the urgent need for action. 'Metadata Mastery' and 'Catalog Power Play' reminded attendees that revenue starts with clean, structured data. Meanwhile, 'Liable Or Safe?' sent a chilling message to execs ignoring streaming fraud: legal liability is no longer optional—it's imminent. The Money Behind The Music Capital is flooding into music rights—and not just for the major players. Panels like 'Indie Music Rights: Major Money Moves' and 'Investing In Music's Future' demonstrated how royalty-backed financing and catalog optimization are being extended to mid-tier and independent artists. Companies like Sound Royalties and Primary Wave outlined financial models that offer cash flow without surrendering control. Engagement Reimagined: From Roblox To Reels Reaching fans today requires an evolved playbook. The demise of the playlist model was underscored in 'Playlists Are Dead,' which highlighted how immersive experiences on platforms like Roblox are outperforming traditional digital strategies. Meanwhile, 'User-Generated Hits' and 'Finding Fan Archetypes' explored how remixes, mashups and algorithmic virality can drive discovery—if artists are prepared to license and monetize them properly. Building Bridges, Not Silos Lastly, panels like 'Plug & Play Success' and 'Break The Silos. Build The Future.' addressed a core infrastructural problem: fragmentation. Whether it's metadata silos, disconnected platforms or outdated licensing pathways, inefficiencies are eroding value. By embracing interoperability and collaborative tech ecosystems, the industry can scale faster—and smarter. The Takeaway Music Biz 2025 wasn't about predicting the future—it was about building it. Whether you're an artist, investor, label or tech founder, the message was consistent: the next era of music won't be dominated by the biggest companies, but by the most adaptable ones. Those who can balance innovation with attribution, data with empathy and independence with scale are the ones that thrive.
Forbes
5 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Lessons From ETH Dublin: The Crypto Community Grows Up
Hackathon teams present their projects at ETH Dublin, with one team explaining how their solution ... More addresses doom-scrolling and screen-time goals. Paul Dylan Ennis, an Irish academic, sits in front of the stage next to Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum. They are sat in a Dublin cellar, flanked by pictures of padron peppers and tomatoes. A professor at University College Dublin, Ennis does not look like a stereotypical academic. He is covered in tattoos, including a prominent Ethereum logo inked on his skin. As the conference unfolds around him, he finds himself thinking about a sci-fi essay he once wrote exploring what the world would look like if everyone lived as sovereign individuals. His thought experiment asked: what if we took the ideals that the crypto community holds sacred and made them universal? The world we live in today would have seemed like strange science fiction to many of the people who attended ETH Berlin in 2018, when I first saw Buterin in person. Or at least I think I saw him, because he may have been wearing a fur suit during what was then a fringe gathering of crypto enthusiasts. But here's an even more sci-fi twist: many of the hackathon projects at ETH Dublin were built using AI coding tools that didn't exist seven years ago, creating better minimum viable products faster than anyone could have imagined. What strikes me about Ennis's reflection is the apparent lack of recognition from many in crypto circles that, in many ways, this vision has already materialized. Yet here they are, trapped in an odd dynamic of discussing the same topics they debated seven years ago, seemingly oblivious to how dramatically reality has shifted since then. Paul Dylan Ennis (left) and Vitalik Buterin during a talk at ETH Dublin, discussing crypto's ... More evolution in the venue's atmospheric stone cellar. I sat through a panel called "Can we onboard the masses?" where "IrishNFTGal" spoke about onboarding her 90-year-old grandmother to nonfungible tokens (NFTs), admitting that she "didn't get much out of it." The conversation felt like a time warp. The same earnest discussions about user experience and mass adoption that dominated Berlin 2018, as if nothing had changed. But here's the uncomfortable truth the crypto community struggles to acknowledge: average users are much more interested in speculation than in vague concepts like "individual sovereignty" and "privacy," which remain abstract, ideological and political to most people. Crypto delivered exactly what users actually wanted, easy access to financial speculation, rather than what idealists preached they should want. The adoption Buterin does celebrate represents crypto's quieter victory. EU and Taiwan digital ID systems based on zero-knowledge proofs, the seeping of open source culture from crypto-adjacent circles to broader tech, crypto principles shaping AI conversations. This infrastructure and ideological influence spread even as the community obsessed over pictures of monkeys on a blockchain. These examples showcase crypto's philosophical wins, where decentralized thinking has permeated traditional institutions and shaped how governments and technologists approach digital systems. But there's another kind of adoption story that Buterin doesn't highlight, one that tells a different tale about what users actually want. Bitcoin exchange-traded funds allow mainstream investors to speculate without understanding keys or wallets. TrumpCoin and other memecoins let millions participate in speculative theater through financial markets. Prediction market Polymarket is widely cited on the news. Apps like Revolut enable instant crypto speculation from your phone. This is mass adoption too, just not the kind that makes crypto conferences feel good about themselves. Judges deliberate on hackathon submissions at ETH Dublin, reviewing projects in the venue's historic ... More stone cellar spaces. The most telling sign of crypto's maturation wasn't found in any panel discussion, but in the venue logistics. ETH Dublin and a major Solana event shared the same space. This is an acknowledgment of how massive Solana has become and how the ecosystem has evolved beyond ideological purity. Many submissions at ETH Dublin had also been pitched at various Solana hackathons. Builders now follow opportunity across chains rather than pledging allegiance to single ecosystems. One of the speakers on the ETH Dublin stage, Dr. Nick Almond, announced that he had recently changed employers to Jito, a Solana restaking protocol. Alejandro Gutierrez, one of the founders of ETH Dublin, was the butt of several jokes for also participating in the Solana ecosystem. While it's somewhat new for speakers to be openly "curious" about which chains they support, the people in the crowd have always been 'multi-chain curious', except at some bitcoin events, where some attendees are genuinely monotheistic about their chosen cryptocurrency (even if the speakers aren't). A person I met who pitched at ETH Dublin was an ambassador for Avalanche and also built an open source bitcoin wallet. Crypto factions seem important from within, but all crypto people are the same to outsiders. Perhaps most tellingly, Base (Coinbase's layer-2 on Ethereum) had a prominent presence sponsoring workshops. Base is self-admittedly early on its journey to decentralization, which is corporate speak for "not decentralized at all yet." But it serves user needs easily and efficiently. The community's embrace of Base represents a fundamental shift: a recognition of pragmatism over purity, whatever works for users over ideological consistency. Or a betrayal of ideals, depending on who you ask. ETH Dublin attendees collaborate on a project during the hackathon The hackathon results revealed both continuity and transformation. The overall quality was dramatically higher than previous years, largely thanks to AI-assisted development tools that allow teams to build better minimum viable products faster. Yet the themes remained disparate, with sophisticated AI integration sitting alongside retro ideas like putting ancestry records on blockchain. The winning projects told the story of crypto's practical evolution. RecEth, which took first place, generates confirmation emails for crypto transactions, a simple solution bridging the expected user experience of traditional finance with crypto's reality. Latinum, the second-place winner, provides payment middleware enabling Model Context Protocol builders to monetize their services, allowing AI agents to manage budgets and make autonomous payments. Fundraisly aims to become a global platform for legally compliant fundraising, while my personal favorite LockedIn creates a social platform where users stake ether to combat doom-scrolling habits. These projects address real behavioral and infrastructure problems rather than chasing ideological goals. Some ideas remained stuck in 2018's mindset, but the execution was powered by 2025's technology stack. Perhaps a metaphor for some of the crypto space. Many of the participants were the same people who were around 7 years ago, but the conference's introspective mood reflected more than just aging. There's a palpable sense of disillusionment with crypto's own governance experiments. The journey from DAOFest 2018's optimism to Buterin's suggestion to "burn decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to the ground" in 2025 represents one of crypto's most sobering lessons. Instead of becoming digital cooperatives for the 21st century, DAOs largely devolved into digital homeowners' association meetings complete with petty politics, bureaucratic inefficiency and governance theater. The very people who believed most deeply in decentralized governance are now its harshest critics. This disillusionment extends beyond DAOs to the broader growing pains accompanying crypto's success. Internal politics and bureaucratic struggles now characterize organizations that once prided themselves on revolutionary simplicity. The demographics have shifted from young idealists to seasoned veterans grappling with institutional weight and responsibility. The community has grown up, but growth brought unexpected burdens. Privacy technology has experienced a renaissance (evident in Monero's price action and advances in zero-knowledge research) partly as a course correction against crypto's uncomfortable proximity to establishment power. Buterin himself has been pushing privacy tools with renewed urgency, recognizing that the original cypherpunk ethos of crypto has been overshadowed by mainstream financial adoption. The recent power changes in the US have made privacy feel fundamentally important again to many in the more libertarian leaning community. What was once dismissed as paranoid libertarian fantasy now feels prescient as crypto finds itself caught between regulatory embrace and surveillance concerns. Zero-knowledge proofs, once a niche academic pursuit, have become a rallying cry for preserving crypto's original promise of financial sovereignty even as the industry courts institutional adoption. A panel discussion on "The Essence of Ethereum" at ETH Dublin, featuring industry leaders in a ... More relaxed conversation format typical of crypto conferences. Crypto succeeded by serving user desires rather than imposing ideological goals. The revolution arrived quietly through practical applications, not just manifestos about sovereign individuals, but apps that let people speculate on their phones. Not decentralized utopias for the techno-literate, but centralized solutions like Base that actually work for everyday users. The global nature of the crypto community remains its greatest strength. Attendees understand cross-border financial friction from lived experience, driving practical solutions for real problems like credit score portability and international payments. Their perspectives come from navigating multiple financial systems, not theoretical knowledge. Seven years of development have taught the Ethereum community hard lessons about the gap between technological possibility and human adoption patterns. The most successful technologies rarely fulfill their creators' original visions; instead, they find unexpected applications that prove more valuable than anyone anticipated. As crypto conferences continue grappling with the same fundamental questions, perhaps the persistence of these conversations isn't a failure, it's recognition that some problems are worth discussing for decades because they're genuinely important (and difficult) to solve. The revolution may not have arrived as promised, but evolution continues daily, one practical application at a time. The community's maturation from revolutionary idealism to pragmatic incrementalism might disappoint early believers, but it represents natural growth. What struck me most about ETH Dublin wasn't the technology discussions, but how much everyone genuinely loved the community itself. The conversations were deeply introspective, with attendees reflecting not just on code and protocols, but on meaning and purpose. In many ways, crypto has become a secular religion for the 21st century, a rare space where young people can gather to earnestly discuss how to improve the world and actually build solutions. It's one of the few communities that combines philosophical idealism with practical engineering, offering both a sense of purpose and a path to create change. The hackathon projects weren't just technical exercises; they were expressions of hope about fixing real problems, from reducing doom-scrolling to enabling fair fundraising. Paul Dylan Ennis, with his Ethereum tattoo and academic credentials, embodies this evolution in a unique way. He studies these communities professionally, intimately aware of the nuances of bitcoin governance discussions and the internal politics and drama that most Bitcoin ETF holders never see. His sci-fi essay wasn't just a thought experiment; it was a sprawling academic paper disguised as (amateur) fantasy fiction, exploring how the world transforms as crypto's influence grows. The movement may have evolved beyond its original vision, but it has retained something perhaps more valuable: a community that still believes technology can make the world better, and is willing to spend their weekends proving it.
Arab News
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Arab News
Saudi ministry launches cultural policy challenge
RIYADH: The Ministry of Culture has launched the Cultural Innovation Challenge, an interactive event designed to engage the broader cultural community in policy decisions. The hackathon is designed to enhance the development of the cultural sector and will involve both experts and enthusiasts from home and abroad pitching their best ideas. The challenge is open to innovators, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, public policy professionals, university students, government employees and members of the public. Under the patronage of Minister of Culture Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Farhan, the ministry has allocated more than SR500,000 ($133,000) in prizes for the winners. Anyone interested in taking part can do so, until mid-June, via the link:
Arab News
6 days ago
- Business
- Arab News
70 participants graduate in Riyadh AI and Innovation Hackathon
RIYADH: Seventy participants have completed the AI and Innovation Hackathon program held in Riyadh recently. Organized by the Financial Academy, in partnership with MEDGULF Insurance Company, the program is aimed at training national talents capable of driving the development of the insurance sector in the Kingdom, in line with the goals of Saudi Vision 2030. The hackathon included several key phases, starting with data collection and pertinent challenges, followed by awareness sessions and inviting applications, then idea screening, and the selection of the best candidates. The five-month event culminated in an intensive five-day hackathon with creative engagement from the participants. The Financial Academy has several responsibilities and mandates, such as: including training and qualifying employees working in the financial sectors, setting standards and requirements for practicing professions in the financial services market, publishing scientific research.
WIRED
21-05-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Jack Dorsey's Block Made an AI Agent to Boost Its Own Productivity
May 21, 2025 12:19 PM Jack Dorsey's company went all-in on agents by deploying one capable of building software—and occasionally deleting stuff. Photo-Illustration:At a company-wide hackathon this month, developers at finance firm Block built a dizzying number of prototype tools including a database debugger, a program for identifying duplicated code, and an app that automates Bitcoin support. The sudden productivity boost was driven by Goose, an artificial intelligence agent developed by Block several months ago that can help with coding and other work like knocking together data visualizations or mocking up new product features. 'We've always had really strong hack weeks, but this one was at another level,' says Jackie Brosamer, who leads the AI and data platform at Block. 'We have tens of ideas that we're looking to bring to production.' Goose helped developers at Block to develop a new agent-to-agent communication server at the hackathon. The company says Goose has changed the way it works, not only helping automate code generation but also allowing non-engineers to dabble in coding or prototype for new apps or features. I first spoke to Block several months ago, when Goose was a little less cooked than it is now. Developers at the company admitted that the agent increased their output but at the time also sometimes made mistakes like deleting the odd file (this can still happen sometimes). They ran the system on machines where any changes could easily be rolled back. Agents are starting to change the way many developers and companies operate as AI models get better at managing code, using computers, and wielding tools. Over the past week, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI have all touted agentic coding tools. Block uses Anthropic's Claude model by default, which is particularly good at coding and tool use. Block CEO Jack Dorsey and the company's CTO, Dhanji Prasanna, concluded that agents would shake up their industry in fall of 2024, when improved AI models triggered a significant leap in the performance of many agents. Dorsey and Prasanna decided that Block should build its own agent and that engineers and other staff should dive headfirst into using it. Block's Goose is available as open source (the name, in case you didn't guess, was inspired by Maverick's friend in the movie Top Gun ). Goose can be powered by a range of different AI models and will run commands and access files and folders on a computer. Goose can also tap into a growing number of online tools, like cloud storage platforms or online databases, thanks to the Model Context Protocol scheme for agent communications developed by Anthropic. I used the latest version of Goose to knock together a few simple games and a basic visualization. It does a nice job of handling tedious things like ensuring the right version of Python is available and installing packages. Other tools I've tried seem as capable, but the Goose interface is particularly easy and intuitive, and it seems likely to become more powerful as it gains access to other tools and services. Brad Axen, an engineering lead at Block using Goose, told me recently that Goose has proven especially useful for helping engineers wrap their head around an unfamiliar code base. 'One of the things that works best is if you say 'Hey, I don't know how this works yet, could you please go find everything and give me a summary,'' he says. Axen said back then that using an agent seemed to require a different mindset where you didn't expect the tool to be perfect and were prepared to roll back any missteps. Block says that some developers were initially resistant to using Goose, reflecting skepticism I've heard from other coders who don't trust AI to code well or are reluctant to hand over their own agency. But the company has developed protocols for managing code produced using Goose, for example having humans review everything made at the hackathon for bugs before it is cleared for release. As the complexity of these agentic systems grows, managing stability and security may become a bigger challenge. Axen says he's most excited to see how the server built during the hackathon can change the way other agents use Block's technology. 'It's a weird way of thinking about computers working together,' he says. 'But it's exciting.' What do you think of Goose and the way agents are changing work? Send an email to hello@ to let me know.
