One of the most frustrating aspects of having a wide range of music interests is keeping up with tour dates. In the age of mp3 players that can store well in excess of 10.000 songs, it’s near impossible to keep up with all of your favorite artists. Even if you only care about seeing a handful of artists live, it’s still incredibly difficult to keep up with sporadic updates about concert dates.
Enter Songkick, a U.K.-based startup founded in 2007. The service allows you to first create a profile with a list of all of your favorite artists. You can manually search songkick’s database for each individual artist; however two other methods are provided to speed up the process. If you have a last.fm account, you have the option of entering your user name. Songkick will then scan your public profile and record your top 50 artists. The other alternative is a downloadable plug-in for iTunes which will scan your library for current artists as well as any new artists you may add to your library in the future.
Once you’ve added your location to your profile, songkick’s functionally really begins to, well, “kick” in. An upcoming events feed is generated, listing all of the events featuring your artists in your selected area. How does it work? Every day. Songkick indexes 29 different ticket vendors (although soon enough only one will matter) and updates its database of concerts accordingly. You’ll receive a notification via email every time one of your artists announces a new concert date in your area.
All of your upcoming events in an easy-to-digest feed.
Why is this service superior to similar offerings on last.fm or facebook? Neither can offer the same sort of reliability. The concert listings on either site are purely user generated and not subject to any sort of controls. Because songkick indexes listings directly from ticket vendors, you’ll receive the most accurate, location-specific event information. Moreover, neither facebook nor last.fm currently offers the convenience of email notifications for events delivered straight to your inbox.
