VentureBeat

Behind the online service Songkick is a simple motivation: To make going to a concert as easy as going to a movie.

Some 70 percent of U.S adults did not go to a concert last year, according to Songkick chief executive and co-founder Ian Hogarth, who I met in Austin, TX last week. Does that mean they don’t like music? No, you’d probably be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t like some form of music. Instead, Hogarth surmised that the reason people do not go to concerts is that it takes too much effort. One problem is that the bands you like probably only come to your city once a year — if you’re lucky.

Songkick’s new concert recommendation system, which launches today, allows you to input up to three bands you enjoy, and the service will tell you concert dates for those bands if they happen to be touring near you soon — or if none of your three bands are coming near you soon, the service will recommend some other bands which are, and which you’re likely to enjoy.

In testing out the recommendations, the system works very well. My three bands led me to concerts of a couple other bands I already knew of and really enjoy as well, but hadn’t thought about in a while.

Another interesting feature is the ability to look at your computer’s music library (on iTunes, Winamp, or Windows Media Player) and build a recommended concert schedule from it. Hogarth noted that competitors such as the San Francisco-based SonicLiving require you to re-scan your music to update ticket listing. Songkick’s plugin auto-updates.

At its heart, Songkick is an aggregator of concert ticket information. It can be tedious to go to the various ticket sites (Ticketmaster, StubHub, etc) to try and search for bands’ shows that way. Songkick pulls all that information in and allows you to easily find which service is offering the best price for a show. The service aggregates tickets and prices from 16 different sellers across the United States and the UK. Read the rest of this entry »