Songkick Launches History of Concerts Wiki

Written by Dana Oshiro / June 9, 2009 12:01 AM / 8 Comments

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Songkick has just given audiophiles a new obsession. Best known as a concert listing and recommendation system, the company launched a slew of new features including an editable concert history database (or gigography) and tracking for multiple cities, friends, venues, and festivals. Members can also upload their files and notes to any artist, concert, venue or festival page. The new site already contains more than one million concerts and complete tour histories. I guess it's safe to say our scrapbooking is about to change.

"My favorite concert wasn't flashy at all. It was a packed house, a dark stage and one guy tearing it up. It was riveting." Says CEO Ian Hogarth, "I want people to remember these experiences and contribute to the history of live music." And Hogarth isn't kidding, he's already uploaded his favorite seven-year-old ticket stub to the artist's page.

With Songkick's new wiki-like pages, fans can upload ticket stubs, photos, videos, reviews, set lists and posters to venue, festival and artist pages. Concert-goers have a living scrapbook of live shows. And in turn, these crowd sourced memories are shaping history.

Rather than a discography, Songkick offers a "gigography" or time line. Diehard Vedder fans can see the exact point where Pearl Jam boycotted Ticketmaster. San Franciscans can look at the history of the Fillmore and reminisce on the night they met Bill Graham in the flesh. And good news for you Fern, Forrest and Moon Doggie, your mom and dad can finally look up the Woodstock set list for the night you were conceived. At any moment, you can return to your favorite transcendental concert moment and add to it at your whim.

While competitors like SonicLiving, Livekick and JamBase contain social features around live music discovery, Songkick clearly goes one step further by allowing members to share their past, present and future. And, like any good web 2.0 company, every action and memory is recorded into a feed and calendar. Additional features in the current Songkick release include last.fm integration to automatically track favorite artists and opt-in email alerts on venues and festivals.

If you'd like to stake your claim in music history, visit Songkick.com.

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Comments

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Live music is getting much more attention these days (it seems) with the boom of ticket resellers. A new sight dedicated to live music is preAmped.com. It came online this year but is doing a great job of cleaning up the concert listings and providing a single place to find out where your favorite band is at, or what is going on in your city.

Posted by: preAmped | June 9, 2009 7:46 AM

This looks like a cool site. Shame it's not accurate.
I've been looking previously to track the shows by The Black Keys but Songkick is not even correct for the last week. Witness: http://www.songkick.com/artists/108359-black-keys/gigography?page=1
The Black Keys played on June 5, 6, 7.
Perhaps if they didn't rely on fans adding the gigs and scraped other sites/sources for the correct info it might be more reliable?

Posted by: The Black Keys Fan Lounge | June 9, 2009 7:58 PM

This is true Bruce, BUT, you know the real dates and can correct them. So honestly, they just need super fans like you.

Posted by: Dana Oshiro | June 9, 2009 9:26 PM

Hi Bruce,

I'm sorry those dates weren't on there yet, we try to get everything but sometimes our scrapers don't pick up everything. We're hoping hardcore fans will help us fill in the gaps - you can add both upcoming and past shows to the database.

The Black Keys Fan Lounge looks really cool by the way, it's partly fansites like yours that inspired our new site.

Thanks,
Ian

Posted by: Ian Hogarth | June 12, 2009 12:15 PM

Hi Ian,

Cheers for that. There's definitely a demand for your website's services.

I'm sure I'll be able to contribute when I can find all the dates for past years also.

Cheers

Bruce

Posted by: The Black Keys Fan Lounge | June 15, 2009 2:36 AM

The first step is finding out when and where the event will take place. To find information on upcoming Concert Tickets Online there are several great sources on the internet such as pollstar.com

Posted by: Concert ticket online | June 19, 2009 4:17 AM

See also http://gigsaroundtheworld.com/. A great site to search for gigs around the world.

Posted by: Idan | June 21, 2009 11:28 AM

I wonder why no credit is given by Songkick for information ripped off from other sites such as www.chickeonaunicycle.com? Prosopographers and the like have worked long and hard in gathering and authenticating concert dates and details - if folk such as Songkick are simply going to use the work of others, at least they should have the courtesy to say where the information comes from – even if they cannot bring themselves to ask permission to use it.

Posted by: RMH | August 3, 2009 8:42 AM