The Echo Nest Remix API

Another thing we released during the week we moved, closed a financing, presented at DEMO, announced our developer platform and softly soothed More Cowbell.dj as it got 1 million hits was the Echo Nest Remix API. The Remix API lets you manipulate video and audio on the web in completely new ways just as if you were moving numbers around in a list.

The Remix API currently speaks to a somewhat narrow audience— people that write software that does cool things with music and video— and it’s probably the most “interesting” one we’ve got yet as there’s really no comparison and it allows for some really cool new stuff to happen. But the base idea behind is not far from our Recommend and Feeds products— we’re letting people on the web do stuff with some next generation music information. (Those following us since the beginning aren’t surprised at this turn — co-founders Tristan and Brian have always been into the Rock and Roll Synthesizer side of things.)

We’ve put it out as a Python open-source SDK that hits our Analyze API. This lets anyone contribute examples, fixes to the low-level synthesis stuff, and ideas. Within the first week of its existence, EN’s deputy commissioner of doing-cool-stuff-with-the-APIs Adam Lindsay made this excellent CAN FOREVER mix with about two lines of code:

One More Night (Digested) by Adam Lindsay

You can also hear Funkadelic’s “I’m Never Gonna Tell It” (a local fave) played backwards by beat; this is roughly one line of code after the setup:

I’m Never Gonna Tell It (Backwards by Beat)

The Remix API will be getting some attention soon from others, we’re also porting in our currently-private video manipulation tools. Get in on the ground floor here.

The Remix API team is indebted to EN Super-Intern Rob O for the original codebase and hired gun Josh Lifton for the lost weekend hacking on the release.