There are many different services that let you sign up to get an email alert when your favorite band is coming to town, but UK-born SongKick keeps innovating and keeps finding more support for its efforts. A 2007 graduate of tech incubator program YCombinator, SongKick has raised $1.8 million in its 4th round of funding, according to an SEC filing posted online tonight.
SongKick lets users collaborate to create a shared memory of all the live music shows they’ve attended, complete with multimedia and set lists. The company has said it wants to build something like IMDB for the musical history of musicians. Beyond alerts, ticket sales and a historical resource, SongKick’s biggest ticket to success has probably been its Application Programming Interface, which allows other partner websites to automatically display upcoming concert dates on artist pages. The biggest partner? Music industry approved YouTube sister-site Vevo, which started using SongKick to power its concert listings this summer.
This latest round of funding puts SongKick’s fundraising total at just under $7.5 million.
The service’s basic concert alerts feature is something that a number of other companies provide. BandsInTown.com is often discussed as a SongKick competitor and offers an API as well as a Facebook app. Looking at that site’s design, though, makes me wonder whether it’s been acquired by SongKick, whether there’s a lazy web designer jumping from music company to music company, or some other explanation for the two sites to look remarkably similar.
