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.
