Some of Europe’s leading music tech companies are joining forces in a bid to tackle the coronavirus’s devastating effect on the live music industry.

#NextStageChallenge – a collaborative effort between Music Innovation Hub (Italy), Music Norway, Music Tech Germany, Music Ally (UK), Sacem (France), Sound Diplomacy (UK), STHLM Music City (Sweden), Technoport (Luxembourg), Teosto (Finland), TheLynk (France) and Wallifornia Music Tech (Belgium) – aims to “explore exciting new ways to futureproof the industry” through a hackathon, accelerator programme and conference.

Beginning with an open call for submissions (deadline 24 April), #NextStageChallenge will begin on 27 April and last two weeks, with participants focusing on solutions in three areas: Access (creation, production, broadcasting, curation), fan engagement (audience, user experience, immersive technologies) and value (monetisation, monitoring, rights management).

The best submissions from each category will then be chosen to join an accelerator programme, followed by a conference to showcase their solutions to the wider industry.

Yvan Boudillet, founder of TheLynk, says: “We are calling on Europe’s best start-ups, developers, designers, researchers, music professionals and creators to transform the live music experience for good. We hope these trying times will lead to the most creative and sustainable digital solutions.”

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Video chat service Skype has rolled out a suite of new third-party chatbots, among them a StubHub bot that ‘talks’ to users and recommends events in their local area.

The chatbot was developed at the Bot Hackathon at Skype’s offices in Palo Alto, California, in late June by StubHub engineers Pablo Flores and Carlos Lopez and joins other bots by flight comparison sites Skyscanner and Hipmunk, task automator IFTTT and, er, Spock from Star Trek.

The event, co-sponsored by Skype and Microsoft, aimed to develop a new framework that will allow developers to build bots that also work on Facebook Messenger, Kik Messenger and SMS.

“StubHub for Skype makes finding your next great experience as easy as chatting with friends”

“We’ve been working closely with StubHub, one of the world’s largest ticket marketplaces, to bring you a fun, simple way to find your tickets to an amazing event,” says a statement from Skype. “Add the StubHub bot to find tickets to some of life’s most memorable artists, athletes, performers and experiences – all in one chat. StubHub for Skype makes finding your next great experience as easy as chatting with friends.”

In May IQ spoke to Dave Cotter, the CEO of Seattle tech start-up ReplyYes, which has sold over US$1 million worth of vinyl records using its own chatbots, who predicted the technology could also be applied to concert tickets.

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