Songkick, a company dedicated to providing fans with a comprehensive live music resource online, today unveiled the first ever social concert database. The new site encourages the documentation of live music events by empowering users to create their own personal "gigographies" by flagging concerts they've attended and sharing their experiences with photos, videos, setlists and other concert ephemera, building on the growing trend of leveraging collective wisdom and sharing personal data online. Launching with one million concerts and complete tour histories for thousands of artists, the database provides any artist, concert, venue, and festival, a dedicated homepage for the online community to annotate.
"An amazing concert can change your life, and some concerts have been landmark cultural events," said Ian Hogarth, Songkick CEO and co-founder. "We wanted to give these events a place to live forever, so we've spent a year aggregating Songkick's database. We now provide an online home for the social documentation of these events, which we hope will serve as a testament to the history of live music."
The concerts in Songkick's database date as far back as Bob Dylan's performance at the home of Karen Wallace in May, 1960, to as forward as Michael Jackson's upcoming London tour dates in 2010. New and upcoming concerts are added daily through Songkick's web indexing technology, which automatically aggregates information from 29 global ticket vendors ranging from sites as large as Ticketmaster and Tickets.com to niche regional listings guides like The Village Voice. Fans are encouraged to add their own handpicked concerts to ensure no artist, venue or event is left out.
For examples of what some of the pages in Songkick's social concert database look like, please refer to the following links:
- A past concert page (Radiohead at Victoria Park, June 25, 2009):
http://www.songkick.com/concerts/190885-radiohead-at-victoria-park - An artist's page (AC/DC):
http://www.songkick.com/artists/276130-acdc - A user page: http://www.songkick.com/users/iheartmusic
- An artist's concert posters (Sonic Youth):
http://www.songkick.com/artists/496057-sonic-youth/posters - A dedicated festival page:
http://www.songkick.com/festivals/920-roskilde-festival
About Songkick
Launched October 2007 by co-founders Ian Hogarth, Michelle You and Pete Smith, Songkick is dedicated to providing the online live music resource for fans. Using web indexing technology, the company is building the world's most comprehensive directory of live music events, aggregating ticketing information from over 29 global ticket vendors such as Ticketmaster and Tickets.com. Songkick also powers concert listings on Qloud and Songbird. The company has received funding from Index Ventures, and a select group of angels including Saul Klein, (The Accelerator Group), Alex Zubillaga (former EVP of Digital Strategy and Business Development at Warner Music Group), Jeff Clavier (Softech VC), Dan Porter (co-founder of Ticketweb), Peter Read (Music Nation), Andrew Weissman and John Borthwick (Betaworks), Stefan Glaenzer (ex-Chairman Last.fm), Daniel Miller (founder of Mute Records), Mike Heneghan (former MD Mute Records), and Y Combinator. For more information please visit http://www.songkick.com.
