Songkick Launches First Social Concert Database

Fox Business

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.

Daytona International Speedway selling tickets on mobile phones

Daytona International Speedway is proud to announce their latest innovation in customer service convenience. Now race fans have the ability to purchase select tickets for the Coke Zero 400 or the Subway Jalapeno 250 using their web-enabled mobile phones. This new service provides an easy-to-use and secure process for purchasing tickets for the fans. To purchase tickets on your web-enabled phone visit mobile.daytonainternationalspeedway.com.

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Tickets.com's Doug Lyons Talks Strategy

Venues Today

LONG BEACH, CALIF. — The employees of Tickets.com don’t need 20 million reasons to spend a few bucks on a party. Last week, they found just one reason to throw a swanky soiree at the Grand Hyatt in Long Beach, Calif. — to celebrate the 20 million smackers they just spent to develop ProVenue.

About 90 people converged on Tickets.com’s Executive Summit Tuesday night. On display was the company’s new ProVenue portfolio, a new ticketing application designed to offer venues and box offices a fully customizable ticketing product.

Major League Baseball has yet to switch over to the new platform, although Tickets.com Business Development VP Steve Demots said he expected a handful of teams to be live by Opening Day 2010. Current users include the Hartman Arena in Wichita, Kan.; the Palladium in Hollywood, Calif., and the Seattle Theater Group. The 2010 Vancouver Olympics is also using ProVenue.

As for the future, the next possible market could be regional ticketing companies, said Doug Lyons, director of Sales and Engineering for Tickets.com. The former Paciolan executive (Demots is also from Paciolan) believes many ticketing companies are looking at new systems now that their Paciolan-powered programs are essentially operated by Ticketmaster. Venues Today sat down with Lyons to discuss ProVenues and how Tickets.com hopes to change the business.

Venues Today: What is the story of ProVenue?
Doug Lyons: In the past, there have been companies to compete with the Ticketmaster style. You buy the software, you put it on a server in your building and you sell tickets. The difference for ProVenue is that you get your own version of the software with your own database, but you also get full customization. You get to control all of the fees and can add-on services. Are you interested in stored value? We can recommend our partner Givex, or you can use your own. It’s all about creating a product that’s a good foundation with lots of functionality for the ticketing piece, and then be available to add our recommended services, or do it your own way.


VT: It sounds similar to the Paciolan-model. One of the problems they faced with their legacy software was that there were so many versions in existence that IT became very difficult. How do you avoid that?
DL: ProVenue is what other industries have been doing for the last five-to-10 years. They’ve been building these data centers that host technology and are designed to have shared resources, but still have control and are secure.

VT: You’ve also made some changes to the secondary model, creating a platform that allows the venues to determine how much control or participation they want to have over ticket resales. How are venues utilizing this technology?
DL: The Olympics is a good example. The 2010 Winter Olympics (in Vancouver, B.C.) wanted to offer people the ability to resell tickets through the Olympics website. They can control that and put rules around it, just like Flash Seats does with their product. We can also work with other secondary providers, like StubHub, that can share data. You can also share in the revenue, but that’s between you and StubHub.

VT: What’s your sales strategy?
DL: Right now, we’re not selling as much as we are getting input and feedback. We’re putting the finishes on the product. Major League Baseball was a big priority for us because they are our owners. We’ll put a bunch of teams on at the end of the season.

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International Rugby in Charleston July 4

Independence Day brings international rugby to Charleston, when the USA Men’s National Team takes on staunch rivals Canada in a Rugby World Cup Qualifier match on July 4 at Blackbaud Stadium (kickoff 4 p.m. EST). For the first time in USA Rugby’s partnership with the ESPN networks, this cross-border clash will be broadcast LIVE in HD on ESPN.

The match in Charleston is the first of a two-legged North American Qualification Playoff between the USA and Canada, with the second match to be played on July 11 at Ellerslie Rugby Park in Edmonton.

“It is imperative for us to reach the Rugby World Cup,” said USA Eagles Head Coach Eddie O’Sullivan. “We have got to beat Canada on July 4 and 11 to go straight through, if not we will go into a repechage against Uruguay. That's the way they qualified last time around so that's the immediate short term goal, and if we qualify that will give us a two-year run-in to the next World Cup to become a more seasoned, experienced outfit.”

Both the USA and Canada enter the series following a grueling summer international schedule, with each squad facing off against Ireland and Wales before launching into the three-week Churchill Cup tournament.

Recently promoted to an 18th global ranking by the International Rugby Board (IRB), the USA Eagles head into the test rolling on the momentum of a commanding 31-13 victory over the Georgian National Team in the Churchill Cup Bowl (5th place) Finals on June 21. Canada hopes to recover from a disappointing 44-29 loss at the hands of Argentina Jaguars in the Churchill Cup Plate (3rd place) Final.

However, the ultimate victor of the USA-Canada series is anyone’s game. When the two teams last met in Chicago in June 2008, the USA dominated the first half of the match and sent the Canadians into the locker rooms held scoreless at the halftime. However, Canada turned the tables after the break and came thundering back to win it 26-10.

This time around, the USA hopes a healthy blend of youth and experience will do the trick. Its challenging schedule has led the Team USA to test out a new generation of players alongside its go-to veterans in order to find the best combinations building toward the RWC qualifiers.

“We are currently narrowing down our pool to the squad we want to compete in the qualifiers and we’ve allowed a lot of new players a chance to get some time on the field and show us what they can do,” said O’Sullivan.

“We have about two weeks before we play (Canada) in Charleston and with five games in three weeks it has taken its toll,” O’Sullivan added. “We need these next two weeks to recover and really turn all our focus to Canada.”

The winner of the North American Qualification series will claim the Americas 1 spot in Pool A of the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand and face the host nation, as well as France, Tonga and the top Asian qualifier.

The loser moves on to face Uruguay, the winner of the South American Qualification Playoff, in a two game series to determine the Americas 2 qualifying side, which will take its place in Pool C of the World Cup against the likes of Australia, Ireland, Italy and the Europe 2 qualifier.

A four-team Final Place Playoff will be held to decide the 20th qualifying team in the Rugby World Cup. This would include the third place Americas team versus the second place Asian team in a semifinal, with the winner playing the victor of the European 3 team against the African 2 team to claim the final spot in the RWC.

Buy tickets now to catch the USA vs. Canada live at Blackbaud Stadium via www.tickets.com.

For more information on the USA Men’s National Team and the Rugby World Cup Qualifiers, please visit www.usarugby.org.

Mobile Trends: iPhone Accounts for 43% of Mobile Internet Usage

AdMob's recent Mobile Metrics Report finds that Apple's iPhone now accounts for 43% of mobile Internet usage and traffic. Compared to sales, iPhone surpassed other models in the amount of mobile Web usage and HTML usage. Mobile-optimized sites and iPhone Apps have likely contributed to this rapid growth.

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Tickets.com Client Spotlight: Paramount Theatre

Seattle Theatre Group (STG) presents Bob Weir & RatDog on Sunday, August 23, 2009 at 7:00pm at the Paramount Theatre.

Broadway World
BWW News Desk

Bob Weir already has a secure place in rock history as the Grateful Dead's co-vocalist and what Andrew Clarke (in one of England's leading newspapers, "The Independent") called the genre's "greatest, if most eccentric rhythm guitarist." When you have a modest, anti-promotional personality - and when you spend 30 years next to an icon - it's easy to fall under the radar.

There's a second reason he doesn't always get quite the attention he deserves. Although always a gentleman, Bob Weir can be...contrary. This is the man who, when his muse required that he go study music, chose McCoy Tyner - not exactly a rock rhythm guitarist - as his model. And just as his personality has a discriminating antiauthoritarian streak that leads him down his own road, his composing is just as distinctive and impossible to classify. So that in "Lazy Lightnin'" he combined r & b/disco chords and a time signature in 7. His go-your-own-way point of view is perfectly articulated in John Barlow's lyrics for "Throwin' Stones," which Weir called an "anarchist diatribe." And the dry, offbeat humor of so many of his songs lets you know - his is a nuanced, special voice. Bob Weir was born in San Francisco in 1947 and grew up in the suburb of Atherton. After less-than-popular-with-the-family-and-neighbors experiences with piano and trumpet, he glommed onto the guitar at the age of 13, and hasn't let go since. He soon became the most-junior member of a folk scene that centered on a Palo Alto, California, club called the Tangent, which hosted such future legends as Jerry Garcia, Jorma Kaukonen, and Janis Joplin. Kaukonen was his guitar-picking role model (Garcia, at that time, was a banjo player), and Weir soon became a full-fledged, if young, folkie, listening to Lightnin' Hopkins, Joan Baez, and the Greenbriar Boys, as well as the Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry.

By 1964, at the age of 17, he'd become a fixture at a Palo Alto music store called Dana Morgan's. That summer, when Jerry Garcia went off on a bluegrass odyssey, Weir assumed responsibility for his guitar students. In the wake of "A Hard Day's Night," rock and roll had swept away even the most purist folkies' doubts, so that when late that year Ron "Pigpen" McKernan urged Garcia to electrify their jug band instruments and become a rock band, Bob Weir - already a Beatlemaniac - evolved from jug to the rhythm guitar chair. They started as the Warlocks, played a lot of bars, and then in the fall of 1965 underwent a trial by fire, serving as the "house band" for a series of psychedelic explorations thrown by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, the "acid tests." By early 1966, the tests had grown into events involving many thousand people, and history was never quite the same. And the Warlocks had become not only unimaginably fused brothers, but also the Grateful Dead.

Weir was "the kid," and while his first Dead song, "The Other One," was not only brilliant and enduring - The Dead play it to this day - his early songwriting had its up and downs. His next song, "Born Crosseyed," was actually out of his vocal range, and for a while he gave up songwriting.

Finally, in 1970, he regained focus with a number of tunes. One was "Cassidy," about a young woman of that name whose birth he attended, combined with the same-sounding legendary hero of "On the Road" and the acid tests, Neal Cassady. With this and other songs, he began a songwriting partnership with John Perry Barlow, an old school friend, which would last 20 years and more. After adding legendary songs like "Truckin'" and "Sugar Magnolia" (written with Robert Hunter) to the 1970 Grateful Dead masterpiece "American Beauty," in 1971 Weir proposed to do his first solo album, which would be called "Ace." For various reasons, his backup band turned out to be, for the most part, the Dead. The album was a classic, and it's no surprise that five songs from it made it on to the "Weir Here" list, including "Playing in the Band," "Cassidy," and "Mexicali Blues."

In 1974, the Dead took a nearly two-year vacation (their only lengthy break in 30 years), and during that period Weir took up with a band called Kingfish, really his first side effort from the Dead. Weir took from Kingfish - aside from a massive amount of fun - the songs "Lazy Lightnin'" and "Supplication," and a huge dose of encouragement for the idea that, in order to be a creative contributor to the Dead, he needed to do things for himself.

As a result, the year after the "Kingfish" album was released (1976), he began a solo project with producer Keith Olsen that would come to be called "Heaven Help the Fool." A brief tour to support that album brought him in contact with various session players, including, eventually, Brent Mydland (who would join the Dead in 1979), Bobby Cochran, Alphonso Johnson, and Billy Cobham. This was the genesis for Bobby and the Midnites, who would tour in the early 1980s and produce two albums, including the eponymous debut album, here represented by "(I Want to) Fly Away."

Later in the '80s, Weir hooked up with the talented multi-genre bassist Rob Wasserman at a benefit, forging a partnership that would last 15 years. They began as a duo. Working on Rob's album "Trios," they joined forces with Neil Young to produce "Easy Answers," and then in the period after Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, added drummer Jay Lane and ex-Kingfish harmonica/guitar player Matthew Kelly to become a blues band called the Ratdog Review.

Eventually, Rob moved on, and a settled lineup featuring Lane, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, lead guitarist Mark Karan, reeds man Kenny Brooks, and bassist Robin Sylvester was RatDog.

Tickets: $39.50, not including applicable fees. Tickets on available now at Tickets.com, in person at the Paramount or Moore Theatres box offices, 24-hour kiosks located outside The Paramount & Moore Theatres, charge by phone at 877-STG-4TIX, or online at STGPresents.org.

First Concert at Nationals Park: Billy Joel and Elton John on July 11

Elton John and Billy Joel
Live in Concert at Nationals Park
July 11, 2009
Washington D.C.

At this inaugural concert at Nationals Park, Elton John and Billy Joel will open the evening together with a series of duets, playing twin pianos and trading vocals. Each artist will then perform a set with his own band. The grand finale reunites the two at center stage with their supporting musicians for a closing encore. Don't miss this incredible event!

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