Today, we are very happy to announce a new integration with EMI! Songkick will now be powering tour dates on a number of EMI artist’s websites, with Eliza Doolittle being the first one to go live:
We’re really excited to be working with EMI and their great roster of artists, and hope that the fans will find it useful!
Eliza Doolittle has just hit the road in the UK, so be sure to check out her tour dates and catch her if she’s playing near you.
SXSW has been and gone for another year, and as usual a ton of acts from all over the place headed down to Austin to prove to the masses that they are the next big thing.
Working here at Songkick we’re exposed day in, day out to a wide variety of band names, from the weird and wonderful to the just plain unoriginal. So using the power of Wordle (this is a highly scientific analysis don’t you know…) we’ve made a pretty diagram to show the most common words featured in band names at this year’s SXSW:
‘Black’, by a loooong shot, is the most common word featured in band names for some reason. With these guys being amongst the main offenders: Black Lips, The Black Angels, Small Black, Black Milk…
‘Oh’, ‘Kid’, ‘Little’ and ‘King’ are not too far behind though, and it’s also interesting to see a lot of animals fall into the mix with ‘Bear’, ‘Horse’, ‘Wolf’, ‘Whale’ and ‘Elephant’ all popping up more than once.
So if you’re in the process of forming a new band, you may wish to steer clear of some of the above!
Also, talking of SXSW infographic-style things, there’s an interesting Software Advice post here on the archetypical characters who were found wandering around the streets of Austin this year. Quite amusing 
Hey Londoners who like their dance music – we’ve got a little giveaway that might interest you if you’re free tomorrow night (Friday 18th)!
Proud Group (who have redesigned and reopened The O2 superclub, matter, as Proud2) are offering 4 lucky winners the chance to win VIP guest-lists (so you can invite up to 8 people) where you will receive VIP treatment including fast track entry to the club, free entry and access to the VIP floors.
Performing live on the night is Chicane and there are also DJ sets from Xpress 2, Tom Middleton and Hybrid.
To enter, all you need to do is one of the following:
1) ‘Like’ our Facebook page and leave your Songkick profile link as a comment under this competition wall post.
2) Tweet your Songkick profile link to us with the hashtag #proud2
3) email your Songkick profile link to competitions@songkick.com
We’ll notify the winners via email tomorrow afternoon.
Good luck!
We’re excited to announce that we have an exclusive opportunity for you rock lovers out there. All Songkick users who buy a ticket for any of the following Avalanche tour dates…
Chicago – Arlington Ballroom – 24 Mar 2011
Bloomington – US Cellular Coliseum – 28 Mar 2011
Nashville – Nashville Municipal Auditorium – 30 Mar 2011
San Antonio – Alamodome – 8 Apr 2011
Corpus Christi – Concrete Street Amphitheater – 9 Apr 2011
Grand Prairie – Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie – 10 Apr 2011
Houston – Reliant Arena – 12 April 2011
Wichita Falls – Kay Yeager Arena – 13 Apr 2011
Belton – Bell County Expo Center – 15 April 2011
Lubbock – Lonestar Amphitheatre – 16 April 2011
El Paso – El Paso County Coliseum – 17 April 2011
…will be entered into a prize draw to win a chance to meet some of the bands on the line up!
To make sure you’re in with a chance of winning, once you’ve bought your ticket, just click on ‘I’m going’ on the Songkick concert page:
We’ll notify the winners by email before the individual events (the winner will be able to take another ticket holder with them).
Pass this on to your friends too!
ps ‘Like’ us on our Facebook page to make sure you don’t miss out on any other Songkick competitions – there’s more to come: http://on.fb.me/gRBTtG
Today, we’re excited to finally unveil something we’ve been quietly working on behind the scenes – a Songkick Facebook app! The new ‘Concerts’ app will automatically import and update artists’ tour dates and ticket links straight from Songkick. So as an artist, you can just sit back and relax while we do all the hard work for you. And as a fan, you can easily check out your favourite artists shows whilst nosing on their Facebook page.
To get the Concerts tab on your Facebook artist page, just head to our Facebook page and hit ‘Go to app’ to get started. More info here.
It’s been a busy start to the year for us, and we’re also excited to announce a series of partnerships that will allow musicians to make use of Songkick concert listings on their own websites and site-related services.
Our new integrations with Bandcamp, Crowdsurge, FanBridge, Ning, SoundCloud and Topspin will enable artists to automatically push concert listings and ticket links out to their fans without any manual entry, thanks to the Songkick API.
We hope that these new features and partnerships will prove useful to artists big and small!
Full press release below.
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Songkick Saves Artists Hours a Day
New social tools and Facebook app help musicians self-promote faster and easier
LONDON – MARCH 14, 2010 – Songkick (http://www.songkick.com ), the live music and technology company that connects music fans with their favorite artists’ tours, today announced that it has created a new Facebook app and launched a series of partnerships that will allow musicians to make use of Songkick concert listings on their own websites and site-related services. Songkick’s new integrations with Bandcamp, Crowdsurge, FanBridge, Ning, Soundcloud and Topspin will enable artists to automatically push concert listings and ticket links out to their fans without any manual entry, thanks to Songkick’s API.
The Songkick Concerts Facebook app will automatically import and update artists’ tour dates and ticket links when added to their fan page. The app can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=308540029359. Songkick will also power tour dates within FanBridge’s Damntheradio, a full-service solution for Facebook that helps artists like Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and Enrique Iglesias build their Facebook fan bases.
“It’s become a real hassle for bands to keep their tour information up-to-date across the web,” said Ian Hogarth, CEO and co-founder, “especially because an artist is expected to maintain a presence on multiple sites and social networks. It’s even worse when you consider how much data they need to provide fans for each concert, like venue addresses, set times and ticket links. Songkick and our partners are making it easy for artists, managers, agents and labels, so they can get back to what they do best: creating music and connecting with fans.”
With its first set of live partner integrations, Songkick gives artists easier ways to reach fans with concert information. Now artists can import tour dates automatically onto Bandcamp artist homepages and their Soundcloud profile pages. Songkick now also helps artists like Arcade Fire, Feeder and Pendulum sell out their ticket inventories with Crowdsurge’s hosted ticket pre-sales, while Songkick and Topspin have helped bands like Linkin Park and The Pixies boost direct-to-fan ticket sales.
Songkick’s API will now be used to provide artists with immediate access to its worldwide database of 120,000 upcoming concerts to increase the chance of fans finding out about and buying tickets to shows. Network Creators using Ning, will be able to quickly import concert dates to the “Shows” section of their community pages. Unlike the artist service platforms themselves, artists do not need to maintain a Songkick account to take advantage of this functionality but instead can access the Songkick listings using plug-ins, widgets and search functions created by Songkick’s partners.
With this announcement Songkick adds to the number of partners using its open API, including Yahoo, YouTube, Vevo, the British Broadcasting Corporation and Mobile Roadie, which was Songkick’s first partner in artist services.
To help artists, managers and agents become better acquainted with its platform and partner extensions, Songkick will host an open house around the SXSW Music Conference on Wednesday March 16th from 10:30am – 5pm at Beale Street Tavern in Austin, TX. Please contact Caren Kelleher at caren@songkick.com for more information.
It’s been a great 2011 so far for Songkick and we’re just getting started! If you are heading to Austin, TX, for SXSW 2011, stop in at one of our three events.
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Songkick Open House
Wednesday March 16th
10:30am – 5pm
Beale Street Tavern (upstairs) @ 6th and San Jacinto
Songkick has been growing like crazy! Millions of fans are now using us each month to find concerts. We’re also starting to find new ways to help artists market their tours more widely and also to our users. If you’re at SXSW and work with musicians, swing by Beale Street Tavern on Wednesday and we’ll show you some cool new things we’re building. We’ll also explain how Songkick can help you or your artist by automatically managing your tour dates across the web. Some of our partners will be stopping by as well. So have a beer on us, say “hi!” in person and let’s plan out how we work together around your next tour.
(Email Caren Kelleher for more information or to introduce yourself ahead of time)
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SXSW Interactive — 2nd Annual MusicTech Happy Hour
Tuesday March 15th
6:30pm – 8:30pm at El Sol Y La Luna (6th and Red River)
Songkick, Rdio and SoundCloud are proudly hosting this second-annual shindig. Enjoy a margarita on us (until they run out). RSVP through Eventbrite.
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SXSW Music — Music Tech Meet-Up
Wednesday March 16th
5pm – 8pm at The Belmont (6th and Lavaca St)
Join Songkick, Topspin, MXP4, Hypebot, SoundCloud, Mobile Roadie, MusicMatters and Virb for drinks and appetizers at The Belmont (upstairs balcony). RSVP here.
We’re super excited today to announce a new integration with the ever-increasingly popular SoundCloud. Now artists with SoundCloud accounts can get Songkick listings on their profile in just a few easy steps. Check out how at home it looks:
So next time you stumble across an exciting new artist, you can easily see if they’re on tour and click through to Songkick to buy tickets! Which means you’re totally in a position to beat the cool kid who’s all “Ya I saw them like months ago when they played at…*insert grimy East London venue here*…”.
For you artists out there, it’s really easy to display the dates – just find your artist page on Songkick, grab the URL (e.g.: http://www.songkick.com/artists/2497366-lighthouse-and-the-whaler) and plop it in to the Advanced Profile section of your Soundcloud profile. Here’s a live example:
Let us know if you come across any problems!
And remember… little ‘k’ big ‘C’ (Songkick/SoundCloud…it’s all about getting the capitalization right!).
We’ve taken a long, hard look at our data and rounded up a list of the hardest-working bands of 2010, based on their number of tour dates last year. It’s pretty astonishing. The band with the most tour dates, Mayday Parade, had a whopping 194 shows in 2010. That’s about one concert every other day! Meanwhile, Vampire Weekend travelled two-thirds of the way to the moon across all their tour dates.
We were mostly surprised by the diversity of this list. It’s clear that artists of all kinds touring heavily, from hip-hop star B.o.B, to country legend Willie Nelson, to indie newbies Beach House, and metal gods Megadeth, there’s a huge spread in genres and maturity of careers. That makes us so happy because we love seeing all types of fans using Songkick to go to more shows, no matter what kind of music you like. (Hi, RapeJesus, we’re looking at you!)
Download the infographic here.
Here’s the full list:
1. Mayday Parade—194 tour dates; 71,000 miles travelled
2. Caribou—185 tour dates; 139,000 miles travelled
3. Surfer Blood—183 tour dates; 111,000 miles travelled
4. Two Door Cinema Club—168 tour dates; 130,000 miles travelled
5. Skillet—166 tour dates; 72,000 miles travelled
6. Willie Nelson—161 tour dates; 56,000 miles travelled
7. Lady Gaga—159 tour dates; 89,000 miles travelled
8. Vampire Weekend—159 tour dates; 150,000 miles travelled
9. Beach House—157 tour dates; 89,000 miles travelled
10. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club—155 tour dates; 82,000 miles travelled
11. Never Shout Never—154 tour dates; 56,000 miles travelled
12. Every Avenue—153 tour dates; 73,000 miles travelled
13. Breathe Carolina—147 tour dates; 68,000 miles travelled
14. 30 Seconds to Mars—142 tour dates; 124,000 miles travelled
15. We the Kings—134 tour dates; 82,000 miles travelled
16. Hey Monday—133 tour dates, 51,000 miles travelled
17. B.o.B.—127 tour dates; 128,000 miles travelled
18. Alesana—124 tour dates; 57,000 miles travelled
19. Parkway Drive—120 tour dates; 87,000 miles travelled
20. Megadeth—117 tour dates; 88,000 miles travelled
Which one of these hard-working bands did you catch on tour last year?
ps: a special mention goes out to Frank Turner and Maceo Parker, two artists who have also toured extensively throughout 2010 and clocked up a lot of miles! Sorry that they weren’t included in the infographic, but we wanted to acknowledge that they’ve also been working really hard:
Frank Turner: ~206 shows
Maceo Parker: 106 shows/152,393 miles
Full press release below. We got some of our favorite bands to tell us about life on the road! Check out what they said.
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STUDY REVEALS HARDEST WORKING MUSIC ACTS
Willie Nelson, B.O.B., Lady Gaga, and Surfer Blood Among Top Artists Connecting with Fans on Tour
SAN FRANCISCO – March 10, 2011 – Songkick, the live music and technology company that connects music fans with their favorite artists on tour, released a study of 2010’s top twenty touring artists. The study was based on Songkick’s analysis of the total number of tour dates artists had in 2010.
The Songkick study found a surprisingly diverse set of artists occupying the top twenty touring artists list, including both hip-hop act B.o.B and pop megastar Lady Gaga, established stars such as Willie Nelson and Megadeth, and rising indie artists like Beach House and Surfer Blood. The strong demand for these artists’ shows stands in stark contrast to the generally gloomy news about the decline in the top 50 big acts’ tour revenue, as reported by Pollstar.
“The concert business is increasingly two stories,” said Ian Hogarth, Songkick CEO and co-founder. “While tours are soft for a lot of established acts, there is real growth happening, especially for artists that are using social media to connect with fans and keep them up to date on when and where to catch their shows.
“It’s on tour where artists make the connection with fans, and where fans enjoy the live music experience. Which is why both artists and fans are relying on Songkick to help bring them together.”
Based on Songkick’s concert information aggregated from hundreds of sources, pop-punk band Mayday Parade toured more than any other artist in 2010, playing 194 concerts in the last year. American indie rock band Vampire Weekend travelled the farthest of the top 20, with 150,000 miles, averaging more than 944 miles per show.
The top 20 hardest-working touring artists ranked by number of tour dates in 2010 are:
The full list and charts of Top 20 touring acts of 2010 can be found here. (URL: http://www.songkick.com/blog/2011/03/10/the-hardest-working-bands-of-2010/)
Artists increasingly use social media tools to promote their music and grow their fan base far and wide, which, in turn, creates tour demand in more locations. As a group, these top 20 bands tweeted 87% more in 2010 than in 2009, as measured by total number of tweets each year.
Kev Baird of Two Door Cinema Club, the fourth-ranked artist in Songkick’s survey says, “We rely on social media pretty heavily. It’s an incredible tool we use to keep a personal touch. We ran a competition in Jakarta, Indonesia on Twitter. To win, you had to tweet about us. Everyone’s followers found out about the show and ticket sales went through the roof.”
“It’s almost axiomatic: emerging artists and indie acts have to hit the road to get discovered and to build a fan base,” said Mike McGuire, research vice president, Media Industry Advisory Services, Gartner, Inc. “In this environment, social media generally and in particular services that connect fans with touring artists are must-haves in the toolbox used to build and maintain a fan base.”
Cassadee Pope of thirteenth-ranked artist Hey Monday says, “Being on the road can be tough, so [we] rely on Twitter to keep in touch with our fans. I make sure to tweet at least once a day.”
About Songkick
Songkick, the home for live music on the web, is now the second largest live music destination after LiveNation. Recognized by Billboard Magazine as one of the Top 10 Digital Music Startups of 2010 and voted Best Innovation in BT’s 2010 Digital Music Awards, Songkick makes it easy for fans to track concerts for their favorite artists so they never miss them live. Songkick aggregates artist, concert, festival, venue, and ticket information from across 60 countries, so fans can receive personalized alerts for upcoming shows in their town and find the cheapest tickets. Fans can use Songkick to share concerts on other social networks, and add photos, setlists, and reviews after the show. Songkick’s live music information is distributed across a network of partners including YouTube, Vevo, and The Hype Machine through their API.
Songkick is backed by Index Ventures and Y Combinator, as well as angels from the technology and music industries. Please visit www.songkick.com for more info.
We love setlists here at Songkick. Right now there are over 100,000 on the site, from the old…
To the more recent….
And then there are the even more awesome concert pages on Songkick that feature a photo of the actual setlist itself. There’s something priceless about the way this captures the excitement and anticipation you feel when watching your favourite artist perform. We think it’s great that there are fans who’ll do almost anything to get little pieces of music history like this (especially when it’s a hand-written one!)…
One fan out there in particular, has made this her mission at pretty much every concert she’s been to in the past 17 years. Sofia Hagberg (who also happens to be organizer of the awesome End Of The Road, one of Songkick’s favourite festivals) has been collecting setlists since 1994 and now has over 600 to her name. From Nina Simone to Bruce Springsteen, the collection spans a range of genres, concert sizes and locations.
We were interested to know more about her collection and the inspiration behind it, and she was more than happy to oblige!:
When and why did you start your collection?
It happened at random. My friend Babette and I had hitchhiked from Gothenburg to Stockholm to go and see one of our favourite bands at the time – Counting Crows! This was in November 1994, we were 18 years old and very excited fans…so we went out to Circus (the venue) early in the daytime just to see if we could get a glimpse of Adam and the guys. And as we were hanging around, this man steps out of a bus and asks us for the way to Circus. We pointed him in the right direction, which wasn’t hard as the tour bus had conveniently parked right outside the venue. And we of course also asked him if he was with the band etc. – it turned out that this lovely fella was their guitar tech, Duncan. The show that night was amazing, and afterwards, we hung around by the front of the stage for a little while and Duncan came over and handed us picks and a setlist each.
At the time I had no idea what a setlist was, but it only took a few moments to work it out. And I’ve never looked back since, and pretty much tried to get a setlist from every single concert that I’ve attended after that, obviously not always succeeding.
How do you get the setlists? Any particular memorable moments?
It can be a bit embarrassing, as it often involves standing at the very front and shouting at the top of your voice to the people on stage after the show is over. My standard phrase goes something like: “Please, can I have a setlist, please!”
And it often also involves trying to get eye contact with the techs/roadies, and pointing and gesticulating to show what it is that I’m after… and more often than not, they go and pick one up from the stage and bring it over, and make my day!
Memorable moments – there are literally hundreds! Maybe the most fun one was when me and two friends went to see Flaming Lips at the Forum in 2003… we didn’t have any tickets, but luckily the band were looking for volunteers, and my friends ended up dressing up in huge animal costumes and being on stage during the show. I was too small for the costumes unfortunately, but the band let me tag along anyways… and I ended up making friends with their sound engineer, Chris, while waiting for things to kick off. It was really amazing to see my friends dance around in crazy costumes on stage, but what’s been really special to me ever since, is that Chris, who got me a setlist at that show… has also pretty much saved me a setlist from every single one of their shows that I’ve attended. And throughout my setlist collecting days, there’s been a few people like this, that I’ve gotten to know and who I’ve kept in touch with and who I’m eternally grateful to, for all the setlists they’ve given me, as well as for being great people.
Best concert ever? Why?
Bruce Springsteen at Earls Court in 1999! Again, for some reason I didn’t manage to get a ticket in time, but decided to go along anyway. Standing outside, hoping to find a ticket at a decent price (not likely!), I spot this guy who’s also waiting around… we start chatting and it turns out that he’s the promoter and the person he was waiting for doesn’t seem to be turning up, so he offers me to come with him. Of course I say yes, and he literally walks us both past the ticket check, past two sets of security, all the way down to the front, past the barrier and another security, round the back of the stage, and then we finally end up next to the stage on the right and only a few minutes later… Bruce comes on and I start crying! It was just so unimaginably special, to see and experience everything from so close by and about five songs into the set he played my absolute favourite song – Atlantic City! Definitely the best concert ever! It was out of this world, amazing, fantastic, magical… and I still can’t quite believe my luck to this day!
Sofia has kindly taken some time out of her busy schedule to upload a selection of the setlists to Songkick. Here are a couple of gems:
With over 600 setlists, squeezed into 8 folders on top of a bookshelf…
…Sofia’s collection is now feeling a little neglected, so she has been toying with the idea of giving it a new home. If there are any avid music lovers out who’d be interested in talking with her about the prospect of buying this priceless memorabilia, let us know (in the comments section below) and we’ll drop her a line with your details!
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