Concert recommender Songkick takes $4.6M

January 7, 2009 | Camille Ricketts | Comments | |

Songkick, a site that recommends concerts in your local area based on your preferred artists, has snagged $4.65 million of an anticipated $7.17 million first round of funding, reports VentureWire. The company also aggregates ticket information from 16 sites like StubHub, Ticketweb and Ticketmaster, allowing for one-click purchase.

When VentureBeat last covered the London company in March, we detailed some of its other cool features, including the ability to generate a concert schedule from your personal music library and to compare the popularity of your favorite bands based on various metrics. Now, it also gives you the option to receive alerts when designated artists come to town, and to put a personalized widget showing the tours you’re tracking on your online profile or personal site (heads up, music bloggers). For more on these features and its advertising network Bandsense, see our past coverage here.

Several major competitors are already hot on Songkick’s heals. Online music store PassAlong has launched its own smart concert listing widget, OnTour, also drawing from users’ digital libraries and linking them to tickets, maps to nearby venues and artists’ online discographies. Established music recommendation service iLike has added a “My Concerts” wishlist feature matching upcoming shows to your iTune playlists, and site Bandsintown offers RSS and iCal feeds of concerts based on your favorite artists on iTunes and Last.fm. In this environment, Songkick will need to keep innovating in order to compete.

Songkick was originally backed by Y Combinator in 2007 and raised an estimated $1.1 million in angel funding from the likes of Saul Klein, founding partner of The Accelerator Group, and Jeff Clavier, managing partner of Softech VC, this past June. Index Ventures joined for the recent round.

No information on how long the round will remain open has been disclosed.

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About the Author, Camille Ricketts

Camille is the lead writer for GreenBeat. She came to VentureBeat from Google where she worked on its traditional platforms team, particularly in TV. Before that, she was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York and London. Follow her on Twitter at @camillericketts, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

With GreenBeat 2009, VentureBeat's all-star conference on all things Smart Grid, coming up in November, Camille will be expanding coverage of this exciting space. Stay up to date by following @greenbeat2009 on Twitter or by becoming a fan of the event on Facebook here.

  • iloveprince
    this wont work in US..livenation owns the business..its called a monopoly and monopolies can do a lot of things to control the flow...just like no firm successfully sat on ebay, or amazon...this is VC money down tubes unless livenation buys em!
  • jake
    iloveprince, the ticket industry is changing along with the music industry. You can't say that there hasn't been drastic innovations and give and take from the monopolizing majors in that realm. Things have to evolve especially in dealing with these overpriced tickets and endless fees. Any website like these that offers alternatives helps all of us out. And why would livenation/ticketmaster take these companies down if it's another source of revenue for them? Who would even be willing to join a network on livenation.com? I'd easily pick an alternative that offers cheaper ticket options. I'm a bandsintown fan myself, but songkick looks pretty good too.
  • SonicLifer
    SonicLiving is more popular than the competitors you've mentioned , and the only site in this group with shows beyond the major ticketing outlets (indie venues and small clubs), an awesome social network, and a Pandora partnership

    Check it out!



    http://siteanalytics.compete.com/bandsintown.co...
  • You had me 'til "one click"
    "Allowing for one click purchase " is not correct. Songkick has some pretty cool information, but then they link to the artist or event portion of each ticket site, and there are obviously still many clicks left. There is already a place that gives you a list of sites that have tickets for each tour with a link to the right page. It is called Google, and it is not limited to 16 sites.
  • "You had me," you're right -- there are a lot of clicks left. I meant that as one-click to the purchasing site, but it could have been clearer. Thanks for pointing that out.