Musaic is a killer way to discover music visually through album art

This past weekend was Music Hack Day San Francisco, which was the third in the city and the twentieth overall globally since 2009. There were over 200 developers in attendance hacking away on cool projects that could help change the future of music distribution and delivery.

While sitting through sixty-one demos, there were quite a few projects that stood out to me as things that could definitely get legs if there was enough interest in the project. While these developers were coding for prizes and fun, some of them actually were on to something.

One of the projects that I enjoyed the most is called “Musaic“, developed by Ian Mckellar. Using Rdio’s API, the site randomly shows album art comprised of other album art in a mosaic. By clicking the tiles, that album will open up:

I’ve found this to be a fun way to look at album artwork as well as discover new artists, since clicking the pixels within will open up a new album in its full-size glory. You can click around for the better part of an hour discovering different albums embedded within the artwork.

The only thing that’s missing is a player and links for the actual albums on Rdio. Perhaps Mckellar will take some more time with the project and add some of these enhancements.

Musaic was definitely a crowd pleaser at the hack day, drawing “oooh’s” and “ahhh’s” from the audience. It’s definitely worth taking a look and is one of the strongest hacks from the event. Throughout the day I’ll be sharing more of the goodies that I saw over the weekend.

➤ Musaic

Check out some awesome music hacks and apps from the recent Midem Hack Day.