Microsoft x Last.fm

Microsoft needed to raise their reputation and interest from the coding community, so they asked us to help.

We created Last.fm’s first ever Hack Day, inviting our famously hard-to-please techie fans to build new tools using the Last.fm API at a venue at Truman Brewery, off Brick Lane.

It gave developers a chance to show off what they could build in a day with nothing but their wits and the Last.fm API.

With plenty of free food and drink behind the bar, the hackers dug in, and by the end of the day, there were 30 demos lined up to wow the assembled crowd of geeks.

Hacks including Nostalgia.fm, creating playlists based on your historical charts so you can relive your headier musical days, and Your Next Favourite Band, which finds the artist everyone is listening to but you. Thanks to Microsoft, Xbox’s were won for runner up prizes, and the winner bagged the grand prize of £1000 with StaffWars.fm, which took office stereo wars to the next level…

The day was rounded off with an excellent set from Hexstatic.

50,000 coders saw the promotion for the product and Hackday. A traditional digital ad campaign of this budget would have generated 75 trials based on historical data. This approach generated 307.

Photos by Sztanko Demeter.