A few months ago, a friend emailed me a link to Songkick and wrote, “Sweet site! Get emails when a band you listen to is in your area.” Sweet indeed. The UK and San Francisco based live music and technology company sweeps through your iTunes, Pandora and Last.FM playlists and lets you know when the artists you listen to go on tour. You can also search for bands and track them one by one. As Songkick says, “It won’t get much easier until we invent a mind-reading algorithm.”
This spring, the company released a Facebook app and launched a series of partnerships including YouTube, and Yahoo! and API integrations with Bandcamp, Crowdsurge, FanBridge, Ning, Soundcloud and Topspin to enable artists to automatically push concert listings and ticket links out to their fans. And today, Songkick is dropping a sweet new iPhone app on the world called Songkick Concerts.
“We’re on a mission to make sure music fans never miss another concert by one of their favorite artists. The Songkick Concerts app makes it easy for music lovers to know when their favorite bands are coming to town, quickly check out ticket options, and share concert information with friends on Facebook and Twitter.”
-Ian Hogarth, Songkick CEO and co-founder
Download it here for the iPhone and iPod Touch (Free). Once installed, Songkick Concerts will scan all the music on your device, auto-detect your location, and create a personalized list of concerts for your favorite artists in your location. (Internet connection required.) Users can enable push notifications to know when their favorite artists announce tour dates in their area or use it to look up live shows happening that night. The app pulls from Songkick’s database of 100,000+ events in over 70 countries.
The app is awesome and looks great. It has everything I need to plan an enviable social life around live music. I only wish it had an integration within the app with either Pandora, Soundhound or Spotify so I could play a song of the band I’m thinking about checking out. For me, that would complete the live music app experience. (Speaking of Spotify, let’s add that to the music library scanning list!) But regardless, the free app is definitely worth a download and the time to check it out.
Much like the web app, which is integrated with your mobile app, Songkick Concerts includes a personalized concert calendar, one-stop shopping to look up concert info including venue address and map, line-up, date, time, and all ticketing options. Then use Facebook, Twitter, or email to invite your friends to come with you. In fact, Songkick’s Facebook integration is sweet because it allows you to track the concerts your friends are checking out too. After all, a concert isn’t much fun without your friends
In an era where people are more willing to pay $25 for a live concert than purchase a $10 album on iTunes, The Index Ventures and YC backed Songkick is one of those apps that could have a powerful effect on the music industry. For more on this topic, see our post: 3 ways the Web is making music smarter.
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