Songkick

Over the weekend we rolled out a new feature that we’ve been really excited about: blogger-curated concert recommendations. We reached out to music bloggers in major cities to ask them to write us concert previews. We really wanted a die-hard music nerd to give us a local’s perspective on the best shows for their city, venues they love and hate, promoters they think are awesome, undiscovered local bands that they’ll hype up before the droves descend via the hype machine that is The Hype Machine, etc.

More than that, we wanted to add another dimension to the recommendations on Songkick. Some might say, add counterbalance to the machine learning hegemony that is starting to overrun our small team. Our live music recommendation engine does a commendable job of matching up your music taste with local shows in your area. (How did it know that I’d love to see Calvin Harris again, even though I’m not tracking him? And Matthew Dear is playing in London? Another great suggestion, oh wise recommendation engine.) But if you ever felt like Songkick was lacking a human element, started to get paranoid that it’s just one swift and subtle move for the Songkick robot to go from concert recommendations to total mind colonization, wanted the voice of a discerning HUMAN critic, giving you reasons why something is good? Then the blogger recommendations are just for you. (OK, I’M THE LONE LIT MAJOR ON THE TEAM. SO WHAT?)

Sadly, we were a bit late in incorporating them, so not all of the recommendations made it up in time for our belated publishing date. (SORRY GUYS!) We have current concert previews for London, Edinburgh, New York, Chicago, and LA. If you write a music blog and want to recommend shows, please get in touch! michelle AT songkick DOT com.

So check out the homepage for each of these locations to see what our local blogger correspondents recommend! I also conducted a geeky Q&A with each of them, mostly to satisfy my own nosiness. Stay tuned for that tomorrow.

Enough blogging, I’ve got some Gossip Girl to watch. XOXO!

Hello dear blog readers. I’m sure you noticed already, but we launched a completely new design yesterday to much fanfare. I’m gonna toot our horn a little and point out some of the flattering press we’ve received so far:

TechCrunch: “Forget the Movies, Go to a Concert” (Oh yeah, you do that.)
PC Mag’s AppScout: “Songkick Makes Tracking Live Shows Easy”
VentureBeat: “Songkick’s Recommendation Engine: It Goes to 11″ (WE LOVE THIS TITLE!!)
Ian’s quoted stating the obvious in BusinessWeek: “SXSW: Where Tech Mingles with Music”. Still, it’s BusinessWeek! I wonder if the article would have been different if Sarah Lacy had interviewed him. Hmmm…

So while our site got a beautifying session, replete with artist photos (thanks Flickr!) and improved design, we also added a ton of new features, including

• venue pages (finallyyyyy)
• event pages
• brand new homepage that tests out our concert recommendation engine
• personalized concert recommendations for users

Some people have asked what the deal is with our concert recommendations. If you sign up for an account on Songkick, in addition to a Saved Shows and Your Artists on Tour section (based on what artists you’re tracking tours for), we have a new section where we recommend concerts based on your taste. Why is this different from other sites that recommend music, like Last.fm or Pandora? Well, because the set of artists on tour is not the same as the set of artists with recorded music out. Think of your friend’s up-and-coming band without a record deal who plays shows at your local bar. The recommendations are still in an experimental phase, and I know we won’t get it right all the time, but I (in my full snob mode) think they’re pretty good!

We hope the recommendations increase your chances of going to see a concert. No, you probably won’t go to a concert for a band you’ve never heard of at all, but I think more often than not, we’ll recommend concerts for a band you know and like, but forgot about and aren’t tracking, or a band you heard your friend rave about a couple weeks ago and might go check out, or you read the blogs posts about them, see that Gorilla Vs. Bear gave them a glowing review, check out the mp3 on Hype Machine, and decide to go see them. That’s how we hope it works.