Following the success of our first Musicday last year, re:publica TEN in cooperation with Musicboard Berlin featured a dedicated track to the topic of music at the labore:tory. In the lead up to Musicday 2016, Musicboard Berlin and we selected the best of your submissions to present. We were looking for national and international exchanges of ideas, new formats and future developments in the music scene.

We discovered how mobile music apps and VR/AR affect how we enjoy music, looked at recording methods that deliver 360° sound, music startups that are shifting the relationship between producer and consumer and how virtual supergroups are made possible. Not only programme, but also hands-on: Musicday's Virtual Reality installations were made possible with the support of the Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Technology and ResearchProjekt Zukunft with funds from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Music and digitisation have been tightly interwoven for some time. This motivated us to dedicate a full track to this topic at re:publica 2015. Big Data, open source and streaming services were some of the main topics discussed on the third and last day of last year's re:publica.

Rainer Henze kicked it off with his "The UX of Music" session. In his talk, he called for an open source music system featuring a customisable user interface and the transparent use of meta data. The panel discussion "Spotify, Deezer und Co.", looking at why users love and musicians loath streaming services, was particularly successful and focused on the musicians' perspective.

Some very informative insights were given by the Georg Martin Butz's talk "Pop will eat itselt". The basis of the talk was the question "is everything a remix?", looking at the concept of "making music with music" found in every period of time and human tradition. The talk given by Kevin Schramm was very entertaining. He discussed how Big Data changes music and presented his analysis by showing which musician had mastered the largest German language rap vocabulary. The re:cord Musicday also featured strong political demands in the field of music. In her keynote, Michela Magas, founder of Stockholm's Music Tech Fest, called for the music industry's grasp on copyrights to be loosened. This would allow the best chances for new business models to develop in the music field, she opined.

The first re:cord Musicday at re:publica 2015 gloriously concluded with the Italiopop-lyrics gala event. Guests played bingo, joined in sing-a-longs and drank complementary Ramazotti Amaro, Lambrusco wine and Tequila. The attendees entered a donation challenge in order to win an original CD copy of 1990s dance project Mo-Do's single "Eins, Zwei, Polizei". All donations went to the Hamburg-based Lampedusa project and the contest was accompanied by the Berlin Italopop band ITACA.

Check out our review of this year's Musicday down below, watch the video recordings of the talks on our YouTube channel.

Projekt Zukunft ("Project Future") is an initiative of the Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Technology and Research to support the growth areas of information and communication technology, media and creative economy. Projekt Zukunft develops strategies for Berlin as a location; it builds platforms, initiates networks for the digital and creative economy, organizes exchanges with businesses, develops new support instruments, compiles studies, and implements innovative projects in economy and society. 

The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) is one of the main regional development funds of the European Union. The ERDF aims to reinforce competition and innovation, create maintainable jobs, and safeguard sustainable development. 

Photo credit: Nickolai Kashirin — Headphones (CC BY 2.0)