Audiotool is launching a worldwide hackathon initiative aimed at opening music software creation to a much wider audience — including people with little or no coding experience.
Called “Let’s Build!,” the series will run from May 11 through July 6 and combine online and in-person hackathons focused on building virtual instruments, plugins, DAW extensions, music games, and educational tools using Audiotool’s new NEXUS SDK and AI-assisted coding workflows.
The initiative will include events hosted through Audiotool’s Dev Discord as well as community sprints and meetups organized by partner institutions around the world. Participating organizations include Berklee College of Music, New York University, the Esports World Cup, the WHO Youth Council, and technology partners including OpenAI and ElevenLabs.
And the best part is, there are prizes involved!
Projects created during the series will be evaluated by a judging panel that includes Manon Dave, Head of Future World Design at BBC Research & Development.
AI coding tools are beginning to lower the technical barriers around music software creation in the same way DAWs once lowered the barriers around music production itself. Now it's time to educate people!
Is the “Producer Era” Turning Into a “Builder Era?”
Music technology has almost always been divided distinctly between developers and brands building tools, and artists using them to make music. That's no longer a hard line.
AI-assisted coding — and especially what the tech world has started calling “vibe coding” — is beginning to allow musicians, students, and even curious, industrious fans to build their own creative tools simply by describing what they want them to do. And Audiotool has taken note.
And Audiotool CEO Andreas Jacobi has taken note. He framed the initiative of the hackathon as part of the company’s long-running mission to remove friction from music creation:
“If you can describe it, you can now build it.”
In practical terms, that could mean custom plugins tailored to a specific workflow, fan-interactive music experiences, multiplayer creative games, or experimental educational tools that would have previously required engineering teams to develop.
Are You an Artist?
Independent artists have historically adapted to technological shifts faster than the larger industry around them. Cheap recording software created the bedroom producer boom. Social media reshaped music marketing. Affordable live-streaming changed audience access.
But there's always been a distance between creating music or content and creating the platform itself. Now, AI-assisted software creation could smash that distance entirely.
Not every artist wants to become a developer, but the ability to prototype your own tools, performance systems, fan experiences, or workflow utilities without deep engineering knowledge changes what’s creatively possible for smaller teams.
That’s especially relevant in a landscape where artists increasingly operate like miniature startups: building communities, designing experiences, experimenting with monetization, and trying to stand out in crowded digital ecosystems.
Prizes
This year, the total prize pool is valued at over $70,000. But the best part is that everyone who participates receives $500 worth of credits to start building with AI.
PRIZES provided by Base 44:
- $1,000 USD cash prize per category (we have 6 categories in total)
- Annual Pro license worth $960 for every winner in a winning team (max 5 per team)
- All registered participants receive a free annual Base44 Builders license ($480/participant)
PRIZES provided by OpenAI:
- annual ChatGPT Pro license worth $200/month, $2,400/year per winner (at max 2 per team/6 total winning teams)
PRIZES provided by ElevenLabs:
- Overall winning team — each team member receives 3 months of ElevenLabs Pro tier ($297 value per person)
- Best Project Built with ElevenLabs — each team member receives 3 months of ElevenLabs Scale tier ($990 value per person)
- 1 month free of ElevenLabs Creator tier ($22 value) for all in-person participants
PRIZES provided by LANDR:
- Annual LANDR Studio Pro $250 value · each winning team member
Artists, students, and developers interested in participating can learn more through Audiotool’s “Let’s Build!” initiative ahead of the May 11 kickoff. Learn more here.
Audiotool is a free, browser-based multiplayer music production platform with over 300,000 monthly active users across 200+ countries — a community that has created over 10 million tracks and more than 600,000 collaborations. Built for real-time co-creation from the ground up, Audiotool recently launched NEXUS, the first open developer platform for collaborative music production.
