Remember when mapping out which shows to see at a music fest involved grabbing a calendar from your local alternative news weekly and circling stuff? Well, those days are waning, as evidenced by Lolla’s most recent foray into app creation, a contest called HackLolla, launched on May 6 at Music Hack Day.
To crowdsource the perfect app for the fest, Lolla opened up its API (including data about artists, schedules, events), and furnished additional APIs from Soundcloud, Echo Nest, and Songkick.
From this contest, Lolla garnered 19 entries — from schedule planners to livestreaming apps to games — and after public voting, they’ll choose two to be featured at the festival in August.
We took a look at the 19 candidates, and it seems like a lot of the devs took the fest scheduler approach. That’s all well and good — every fest needs a show calendar (I used the hell out of the Festival Explorer Austin Edition at SXSW) — but some of the more creative apps, such as Set Pickr, which asks users to predict a band’s setlist, intrigued us more.
Check out the gallery below and let us know which of the 19 hacks would be most useful to you at a music festival.
The Showcal
This web app show artists' Facebook photos and fan count, music videos from YouTube, links to social media pages, and info on what time they go on stage. The Showcal also recommends bands to see based on bands you're already a fan of.
Who's Now Who's Next
This Android app does what it sounds like it does -- shows you who's performing now and who's next. It also recommends bands to see.
Pilolo
Apparently, this iOS app identifies the band playing via "geol ocation," and lets you follow the...
