Concert Listings and a Feature Request

Updated: David Porter reminded me to use Last.fm's scrobbling feature so that it can still learn my musical tastes without my listening to their radio service.  I like OnTour because it is attached to iTunes whereas I have to visit Last.fm's Events page online to check upcoming concerts.  However I like that I can also see the events that my friends are attending on Last.fm so I think they get the nod.

I've found it hard to keep up with upcoming concerts of my favorite artists.  Not enough time in the day and all that.  There are lots of event listing sites and services like CitySearch, newspapers and event databases like upcoming.org or eventful, but these are often a pain to parse or navigate, and require proactive searching.  What I'd like is a service that knows my tastes and then lets me know when my artists are coming to town.  I checked out some of the services reviewed by music interfaces.
 

Two services that seem to be doing this trick are Passalong Networks' OnTour widget, and Last.fm's Events feature.  What's nice about both of these is that they make recommendations based on your passive listening habits.  I first wrote about OnTour here and just recently downloaded the latest widget, which seems to work well, though I haven't dug in deeply yet.  My suggested events from Last.fm are not as meaningful because my Last.fm usage isn't very high (due to the nature of my job, I don't stream music at work), however the interface looks clean and intuitive.  On a side note, I wonder why the ticket sites like Ticketmaster, Ticketweb and others haven't offered such a feature to their customers yet.  Same with iTunes for that matter.  Seems like a no-brainer to me.

The feature I'd like to see is one in which I can get news and updates from the artists and bands in my collection without having to go to each of their sites to get this information.  It would be like a newsreader for RSS subscriptions but would be focused on the music in my collection (and perhaps recommended music).  For instance, I recently learned that M. Ward is a guest performer on the new Bright Eyes album from his site, but it would be great to be able to see, at a glance, what's going on with the various artists that I'd like to follow so I know when they're on tour, if they're in the studio recording, etc. 

Comments

[David Porter]

Rags,

There's a couple more of these services - seems like a lot of live-event personalization offerings have sprung up in last year:

http://tourb.us/ (uses Last.fm APIs + iTunes info)
http://track50.com/ (least attractive as must add manually)

It seems like Last.fm may be easiest since uses scrobbling and features nice UI although I just came across SonicLiving last week and really like it. (Btw, even if you're not using Last.fm for streaming, are you not still scrobbling wherever you listen to music? If so, the Events tab should reflect this. You can even scrobble your iPod using app available in Downloads section.)

I suspect Ticketmaster will have a similar feature soon, offered through iLike, given the recent investment.

Also, you may be able to get some of that aggregation through the new FoxyTunes Planet interface, although the presentation might not be ideal as still must click-through for some info and/or it's not yet included as widget (e.g. concert dates).

[Andy Gadiel]

Check out MyJamBase - http://my.jambase.com

You can upload your iTunes Music Library XML file or put in your Last.Fm username and it will tell you when the bands in your collection are coming to your town, as well as recent news and reviews for their concerts.

Hope you enjoy...

[J Herskowitz]

I use AllCrazyStyle (a mashup of Last.fm and Upcoming.org), then further mash it myself with RSS alerts. Check out my postings on it.. http://globallistic.blogspot.com/search/label/allcrazystyle

[Patrick Koppula]

David's correct: iLike - Ticketmaster integration went live Apr 24.

http://blog.ilike.com/ilike_team_blog/2007/04/concerts_near_y.html