The SXSW Music Hackathon Championship rages on in 2016, starting one day earlier this year, on Tuesday, March 15, so hackers, mark your calendars!

What’s NOT changing is the 24 straight hours of buzzing, high-tech creativity as scores of hackers use their programming knowledge and our collection of music-tech APIs to develop their industry-changing prototypes and compete for the huge Grand Prize, awarded by our panel of celebrity judges. The SXSW Music Hackathon is FREE and open to the public with approved application below on this page.

This year, hackers will collaborate and compete in three hack categories, with each category vying for big cash prizes and a load of bragging rights:

• Commerce: how is money getting to artists and rights-holders and can blockchain technology help?
• Creation: how can musicians use tech to create and perform music in new ways?
• Consumer: how can we improve the fan or listener experience?

Participating hackers get to show off their skills, play with the coolest APIs in music-tech, meet our SXSW Official Showcase Artists-in-Residence, and present to high-profile industry celeb judges in one crazy, marathon 24-hour coding experience. A variety of programming expertise is welcome to join, and if you're interested, just apply with the form below.

Hackathon Artist/Entrepreneurs-in-Residence

Joining the hackers as Hackathon Artist/Entrepreneurs-in-Residence this year are Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, rapper Ryan Leslie, and Kiran Gandhi of Madame Gandhi and M.I.A. 

How to attend SXSW Music Hackathon

To take part in this hackathon you need to apply here:

http://www.sxsw.com/music/conference/hackathon

$10,500 in prizes

To take part in this hackathon you need to apply here:

http://www.sxsw.com/music/conference/hackathon

• Will be Announced