Orchard Engineering Nov ’15 Hackathon
For our most recent hackathon, The Orchard engineering team took on the challenge of finding a technical solution which would allow for users to explore our Catalog more effectively. Keeping in the spirit of a hackathon, we did not focus necessarily on adding new features to our products but instead used the time to explore new technologies, learn about parts of our system we may not normally touch and to work with people from different teams!
Team Make Up
To really allow everyone the opportunity to work with folks whom they may not normally engage with day-to-day, the teams were mixed with a combination of Engineers, Product Managers, Designers, and QA’s.
Results of the November Hackathon
This time around, we had four solid teams participating in our November hackathon. Each team really put their creative hats on, duking it out for that number one spot! The outcome being:
- Team 1 — New Metadata
- Team 2 — Trendify
- Team 3 — Orchardify
- Team 4 — Match Assist
Final products from each of the teams were excellent and made it hard for our judges to choose a winner but alas… there can only be one winner. This time around it was the Orchardify tool which came out on top. Orchardify allows Orchardites to search and listen to the entirety of our public catalog in an easy-to-use interface. Read more on Orchardify and other projects below!
New Metadata
There are many uses for such a technology, mostly for surfacing similar tracks. We feel the user base for such a thing would be in the marketing and promotions departments.
Trendify
Made for Orchardists around the world from Marketing to Sync to Client teams. Check out the top trending streaming music from The Orchard’s catalog — discover which tracks are rising in popularity by country and by genre.
Feature: Worldwide snapshot of top trending tracks and listen to them
Feature: Or view top trending tracks by genre or country or group of countries and have a listen. What’s trending in Hip-Hop/Rap in some English-speaking countries?
Tech Stack: Python, Flask, AWS Aurora, RedShift, Bootstrap, JQuery
Orchardify
Enables Orchardites to quickly explore our extensive catalog of 1.5 MM Albums. Orchardites can now search and instantly play Albums.
Feature: Users can Search for Albums by keywords such as Punk Rock, Pizza, and DMX (which will return DMX’s albums) and play any song from the results.
Tech Stack: ReactJS, Amazon ElasticSearch, CloudSearch, Python
Match Assist
Match Assist was created for the filmmakers and YouTube content creators we often work with looking to add music to their video content. Many of these content creators have an idea of the music they would like to include in their films and videos, however including popular music to content often comes at a high royalty cost.
Good thing The Orchard music catalog offers a variety of tracks in every genre and sound you could imagine. This is where Match Assist comes in — a tool which allows users to take a song they had in mind and find its Orchard counterpart. The tool also provides further customization where components like pitch, tempo, etc could be utilized to find the perfect song. Finally, the user could sync up their video to their new song to get a feel for their final product.
Mamuna
Currently listening to Kendrick Lamar, Alright
