Dating Application Scoops Top Prize from 7digital

• LonelyHarps dating application wins 7digital API prize at the first Music Hack Day. 

London, UK, July 09 – 7digital.com, the home of MP3, today announces the LonelyHarps application, developed at the recent Music Hack Day, as the winner of the 7digital API prize.

Over the weekend, developers from across the globe gathered at The Guardian newspaper offices for the first official Music Hack Day. Participants were encouraged to use a range of music centric API platforms, including those from BBC Music, Last.fm, Songkick and SoundCloud, to create innovative and original applications. Each application was presented by the ‘hackers’, with prizes for the most creative.

The 7digital API prize went to developers Jamie Hollingworth and David Padbury, who produced the LonelyHarps application. Combining 7digital’s API with the Last.fm and Gigulate services, they created an application designed to match prospective romantics through mutual music tastes. The application also creates playlists for the ideal first date. 


Ben Drury, CEO at 7digital, comments “We designed our API to be as open and accessible as possible for use by individual developers  to global corporations. We use the latest Internet standards such as OAuth to enable rapid development of new music services that can access our rich, structured music data and catalogue. This exercise demonstrates how easy our API is to use, and the great services that can be developed by anyone with a creative streak within a few hours.”  

An honourable mention went to the developers of the ‘7digital and Guardian news mashup’. This combined the 7digital and Guardian newspaper APIs to create a plugin providing relevant MP3 streams and a Guardian music news feed. The plugin searches for known music artists within website content, and adds links to streaming MP3 and music news content. 


More information on the applications can be found on the Music Hack Day website.

    Music Hack Day: http://musichackday.org/

    LonelyHarps application: http://musichackday.org/index.php?page=LonelyHarps

    7digital and Guardian news mashup: http://musichackday.org/index.php?page=7digital+and+Guardian+news+mashup

    Full list of Music Hack Day hacks: http://musichackday.org/info/Hacks