Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

The fifth annual Measure of Music will still have everything from last time including panel talks, keynote speakers, startup pitches, networking events, career fair, and of course the music data hackathon/workshop with at least one in-person location!

We're also bringing back the data-driven artist development project option as part of the hackathon to give hands-on help to artists and real-world experience to participants.

The celebrate year 5, we'll be bringing back a few familiar faces from previous years to give us updates on how music has changed and there may be a few more surprises along the way.

Find out about last year's event at measureofmusic.com.

Of course! In fact, if you sign up as a spectator, you'll be the first to know when you can sign up to participate in the projects. When you sign up to participate in the project, we'll just convert your spectator ticket to a participant ticket instead.

You can be involved as an individual contributor as a speaker, weekend mentor, weekend staff, or hackathon/project judge. 

Speaker applications have closed as of December 2023. All other individual opportunities will open for applications in early 2024.

You can be involved as a company by being a sponsor, an in-person location host, providing hackathon data/access/prizes, participating in the startup pitch, providing an offer to the startups that pitch, having a virtual booth at the career fair. Currently, we are accepting sponsors, you can inquire via email. All other company opportunities will open for applications in early 2024.

You can be involved as an artist (or part of an artist's team) in the career fair to seek team members for permanent, part time, contract or project opportunities or as an project participant artist, to be the subject of the project participants work on. All artist opportunities will open for applications in early 2024.

You can be involved as an individual contributor as a speaker, weekend mentor, weekend staff, or hackathon/project judge. 

Speaker applications and sponsorship opportunities have closed as of December 2023.

You can be involved as a company by being a sponsor, an in-person location host, providing hackathon data/access/prizes, participating in the startup pitch, providing an offer to the startups that pitch, having a virtual booth at the career fair. 

You can be involved as an artist (or part of an artist's team) in the career fair to seek team members for permanent, part time, contract or project opportunities or as an project participant artist, to be the subject of the project participants work on. 

Visit our Get Involved page to see all options & find out more information about being involved as an individual, company or artist.

The goal of this program is to increase the visibility of data in music, increase the accessibility of music & tech for minorities, and help build confidence and exposure for those looking to get into or transitioning around this space. If you're as passionate about these things as we are, then we hope that's enough!

If supporting artists is your thing, the artist hackathon provides direct support to emerging talent and your involvement can provide them with a marketing budget, access to new tools, and just more experience & help navigating the music industry.

But on top of that, we hope that it will also give you fresh talent to consider, more usage of your API to continue to grow & improve your platform, the potential to have a business question looked at with a fresh set of eyes, opportunities to other businesses, and of course, just the ability to help people that I'm are as passionate about music & tech as you!

Last year, we introduced the option to donate to Measure of Music. We have a $5 donation option, a pay what you want option, or of course, you can skip it all together. This is all completely optional. This contribution just makes the financial burden easier for event organization as it continues to be completely free. This helps cover expenses such as paying speakers, paying for software, paying weekend staff, etc.

We are not a registered charity in any country, so your donation will not be tax deductible but may qualify as a business/educational tax deductible expense in some countries.

We will work to get approval to record as many of the speakers as we can but we cannot guarantee all speakers will authorize us to do so, so it's best to try to attend live. All project presentations will be recorded and available for re-watch.

There will be two Slack workspaces this year. One made for participants & contributors only for the weekend only and the other existing community Workspace. If you're in both workspaces, you'll see one has a "2025" in the icon to indicate it's for the weekend only and "Community" in the icon for the permanent Community Workspace.

Due to the complexity of the weekend, it is unlikely that the Measure of Music team will be able to respond to logistical questions asked in the Community Slack Workspace during the conference weekend but you're welcome to chat with one another and feedback on the event public or privately. There will be a dedicated #conference2025 channel just for that.

Judges, in order to maintain impartiality, are not allowed in Project Workspace and we ask participants and judges to refrain from interacting with one another in the Community Workspace (or anywhere else) until the event concludes.

At the end of the weekend, the Project 2025 Workspace will be archived but everyone is still free to discuss & stay in the Community Workspace.

You can always add it by going to the schedule page. You'll only be able to add talks that match your ticket type. If you added a project participant ticket after you got a spectator ticket, if presented with two options, always choose the talk marked 'Participant'.

We will have several networking opportunities throughout the event. Networking will include sponsor booths, company & artist career fair, speed networking, and discussion booths. You'll have the option to do speed networking all 3 days of the conference with the remaining activities taking place on Saturday. Some activities will have limits based on capacity or participation level. See below for details on the activities, with more details TBD:

Career Fair

Companies: The career fair will be an opportunity to talk with companies looking to hire for various roles. On the Measure of Music conference page you can see what type of roles they’re hiring for categories including tech, non tech, remote, entry level & more. The only roles companies are allowed to discuss are paid roles. The presenters at the booth will answer your questions about various roles, about life at the company and may present more details about the company. They’ll also provide you a means to reach out & follow up with them. Please read the info provided about the company on the conference site before joining to avoid asking redundant questions. 

Artists: The artist career fair functions just like a typical career fair, but specifically for artists & their teams to find new team members on an on-going or contract basis. The goal of this event is to pair up independent artists who need help & support with those looking for experience working directly with artists such as students and career changers to the music industry. Unlike our company career fair, though we highly encouraged paid roles, roles for the artist career fair do not need to be paying roles to be inclusive of artists early in their career. The roles do need to provide value to the potential candidate such as public credit to the team member, ability to publicly share any work done, significant access to the artist & their network or payment based on commission/sales.

Non-Profit/Community Booths

An opportunity to meet with great music based communities and non-profits to hear more about their initiatives, find out how to become a member, and more.

Sponsor Booth

Sponsor booths are an opportunity to learn more about the companies that sponsored Measure of Music. This is a chance to learn more about their platforms & APIs and how they could help you in your work/business.

Speed Networking

These are quick 5 minute chats with anyone attending the conference be it participants, speakers, judges & more. You’ll be automatically paired off!

After Party

After all your hard work, you can use this opportunity to blow off some steam. It'll be late for many so we get if you don't want to hang out but we hope you stop by for a bit to celebrate! There will be virtual networking options throughout the after party.

It's a free event to help you upskill--we hope that's motivation enough but on top of that, you'll hear how to use key music tech APIs/programs directly from those developing and using the platforms every day. You'll be able to expand your network and meet people involved and interested in music, tech & data from all over the world. You'll also have a great new portfolio piece that you can show off to future employers.

There will be people with casual interest in music & data as well as people looking to make it their full time job. There are recent grads & career changers. Those that have participated in the past are from cities all over the Americas, Europe & Africa with varying skillsets and include a high percentage of women and people of color. All are welcome!

In 2021, we had over 100 people drop out of the hackathon. In order to avoid that this time, the window to sign up for the project part of Measure of Music will only be a few weeks rather than a few months.

So now, we stagger the tickets to release batches every week (from Jan 10 to Feb 8), so even people finding out late about Measure of Music have their chance to participate.

After the final batch of spaces are filled, we will release more as we get cancellations up until February 15. February 15 will be the final day to register (if spaces are available).

No, the waitlist proved too challenging to manage and caused too much ambiguity for those on the wait list. If you sign up, you have a spot and once spaces are filled, that's it. See above to read about how the tickets will be staggered.

You don't need to do anything special, however; you may see in your HeySummit account or via email links for both spectator and participant access. If given the choice, always use the participant links as you will have preferential access for the duration of the weekend.

You'll be required to do the following before/during the event:

• Mandatory Participation Confirmation (opens approx 10 days before the event & closes 24 hours before the event)
• Mandatory Day-Of Check In (every day of the event you check in via a form so we know you're 'here' including the Friday we start).

The participation confirmation is similar to checking into a flight. We will send you an email when check-in opens & try to provide additional reminders. At this time you'll be able to provide information about your skills, provide a bio, choose to meet your team in-person (if applicable) & pick teams (if you want to).

This check-in is to ensure everyone is still planning on attending and allows you to provide the most up to date information about you as possible. This also allows you to pick team mates once everyone has already registered.

Unfortunately, if you do not check in within the allotted time, your participant ticket will be canceled and you will be unable to participate.

Prior to the start of the event, some of our sponsors & data providers may ask for you to sign up to gain access to data. If we need additional information from you or need you to do anything, we'll let you know. This will be optional but will be beneficial for you to take advantage of.

To sum it up, you must be available from:

• Fri, Feb 21 / Sat Feb 22: Fri, Feb 21 @ 5PM LA / Sat, Feb 22 @ 1AM UK
• Sat, Feb 22: Meeting times/availability to be agreed upon by your team on your own. (approx. 8 hours)
• Sun, Feb 23: Meeting times/availability to be agreed upon by your team on your own. (approx. 8 hours)
• Sun, Feb 22 for Project Presentations: 6:45-10PM UK | 7:45-11PM FR | 10:45-2PM LA | 1:45-5PM NY | 12:45-4PM TN

We completely understand that 3 days is a big commitment, especially a Friday. Because of that, we're going to be flexible for Friday attendance. Though we understand participants have signed up from all over the world (and we love that!), this event's timing is most convenient for those in the Americas, Africa & Europe. While we can allow some flexibility on availability for some of the event, ALL participants must be available to present their projects as judges will be making their decisions live.

In addition, in order to be fair to your team members, ALL participants must be available by Friday, Feb 21 at 5PM LA / Saturday, Feb 22 at 1AM UK. If you have not checked in with your team for the event by that time, your spot will be forfeited. Note: Those in the Americas will miss all of Friday's talks if you do not join until 5:00PM and they may not all be available for playback later.

Each day of the event, once all team members are accounted for, there will be a process to report in that all are present to ensure everyone participates & we can reach out to anyone missing directly.

If you cannot be available for these times, we ask that you PLEASE cancel your registration. We have filled all spots every year & people end up missing out. A cancellation link will be provided after project registrations open.

You'll be working with other people and you don't want to let them down so be sure that you're willing to commit to this! At the conclusion of the 3 days, we're expected that you've spent around 24 hours working & watching (about 8 hours each day!). If that seems like too much, perhaps you should get involved by being a spectator instead.

We will have several sponsors offering up their office space for the event weekend! Those that sign up for the hackathon will be given the option on the participation confirmation form, which opens about 2 weeks before the event, to be able to select if they'd like to meet in person in their city. Those meeting in-person will be paired in groups together within their respective cities. More information will be shared in early February on which cities are available and how to sign up.

While Measure of Music celebrates music & data, it is not a software development, data analytics or data science course. If you have an interest in learning to code, we recommend using a free platform such as Codeacademy to learn technical skills which you can use to work with the music data provided to you during the event.

Coding skills are absolutely not necessary to participate in the hackathon, though.

In addition to the panel & talks, participants will spend the weekend working on data-related projects with the APIs and data that will be provided by the sponsors (and any other publicly available data). You'll be completing a project that can easily be done with about 16-24 hours of group work to be able to present to an audience. You will have the option to work on sponsor-provided business cases, artist-focused project or you are free to come up with their own music data idea and roll with it.

You can check out our YouTube to see past projects to get more inspiration.

While it's not necessary to do any prep work, some sponsors provide access to their platforms or data early so you can start getting familiar prior to the event.

In addition, if there's a skillset you want to highlight or improve upon during your project, it's a good idea to brush up on that before the event, see the above question about learning to code. Other examples could be things like presentation development, graphic design, public speaking, data visualization, etc. We won't be able to teach you all of these skills during such a finite amount of time, so we'd recommend you doing some independent learning prior to the event if you think you need some additional experience.

We also may have some pre-conference events in which you can meet some participants, which can help you pick teammates early.

Of course! Everyone is welcome regardless of previous experience. Your ability to write, design, present or most importantly, your passion for music and eagerness to learn new things are more than enough!

Absolutely! We're glad that you loved it so much that you want to give it another go.

Of course! We've had everyone from beginners to professionals working on projects. We understand there are many reasons why a professional might want to participate. For example, if their everyday work is proprietary in nature, having a portfolio piece that they're able to share can be very valuable.

If you happen to have a bit more experience, you'll be paired with less experienced people just to keep things balanced. Your teams will appreciate your expertise! That being said, if you'd rather lend a helping hand, we are looking for mentors to support those project participants, as well. Just send an email to [email protected] to inquire.

You'll have the opportunity to share that with us when you confirm participation. We'll do our best to accommodate all requests but we also want to ensure the event is fun and fair, so should we need to redistribute participants to ensure everyone has a diverse array of talent we may. If you request to not be on someone's team, that request with absolutely be adhered to.

We have to cut off registration so we don't watch too many hours of presentations. Groups will have between 5-7 people. The max amount of participants will be under 150 people.

All talks will be virtual. Throughout the weekend there will be a Slack channel for everyone to be able to talk with one another easily. Teams will also be able to use any platform of their choosing to communicate with one another, such as Google Hangouts (free).

Happy to answer them! Email us at [email protected].

You can also check out the about the event page.

In mid-February, when you complete your participation confirmation form, you'll be given the option to select if you'd like to work on an artist specific project. You'll be assigned an artist from the pool of independent artists that applied to be the subject. You will collaborate with them and/or their team to complete the deliverables for the artist specific track. Read more about the artist project here.

If you wish to focus on a specific artist outside of the artist project track, you're welcome to in the traditional hackathon project instead if agreed upon with your team.

Please cancel your registration by filling out the form that will go live after project registrations open. You will receive a confirmation once your registration has been canceled (within approx. 2 business days).

For your project, you can use any data that is free, publicly available and not in violation of any company's terms & conditions. This means that you CANNOT use your own company's data, your personal data (such as your own Spotify For Artists data), data that is available to you through your university or data scraped from any website where their terms & conditions prohibit such activity.

The only exception is if you are willing to and are legally able to offer up data to all participants. Meaning, if you are willing to give everyone read-only access to your YouTube data in case they also want to use it for their project, then you may use that data in your project.

These restrictions are why we've worked to provide you with so many sources of data! If you have any doubts as to whether a data source is acceptable in advance or during the event, do not hesitate to ask.

• On the Friday of the event, check in early as you'll have the most time to work with your team if you do.
• If you have someone you want to work with, coordinate check in times as we'll wait until you've all checked in or towards the end of the check in window to assign groups.
• If someone's missing/not working out, speak up sooner rather than later so we can fix it. Time's too precious to waste.
• Decide on your idea on night one before you go to bed. This gives you a lot more time to actually get to work on the subsequent days.
• Your presentation will be cut off at 5 minutes, do make sure to practice. Time goes fast!