Just thought I’d highlight issues I have with concert listings in my dear city. I’m talking about advanced ticketing for bands that can pack medium-sized halls. The main problem I have with all of them is a lack of centralized event listings or even a common format where concert-goers can aggregate dates and details through RSS feeds or RESTful apps. Venues in this camp include El Mocambo, Lee’s Palace, Horseshow Tavern, Phoenix, Opera House, and The Mod Club (which has Flash listings that your browser can’t even search.) Sneaky Dee’s are in there too but they haven’t had a working events calendar since their latest event booker started in June. Promoters like Against the Grain and rootmeansquare also have separate listings that go across multiple venues.
Up to now, I’ve been tracking upcoming concerts by using local record stores, Rotate This and Soundscapes. They’re the best way for downtownizens to avoid Ticketmaster/LiveNation service fee money-grabs, instead getting tickets in-person with no scalping pretense. There are still issues with certain events falling through the cracks (no advanced ticketing?) and these listings not allowing custom sort criteria such as band name, date, price, or dated added to listings.
What I’d really like to see is for venues and promoters to use a feed or web service with full show details. It’s great when they show band set times, convenient when the openers are inexplicably terrible. With the event name, venue name, address, and list of artists with start times alongside links on where to buy tickets, all the necessary details are there for a potential customer. It’s a pipedream to get all these competitive profit-seeking interests to use one common service, so maybe just RSS can even the playing field.
Of course, the obvious part-solution to this whole problem would be if promoters would use Facebook . For aforementioned Sneaky Dee events held this summer, the only way I was able to find out about shows was through my friends’ joining Facebook events created by the venue’s event organizer. ATG’s group has also been on the ball (at times) by creating events for headlining artists and sending out invites to every member of their group. However, if all promoters pulled this, you’d be bombarded by dozens of invites everyday. It would be much better to narrow down invites based on genre (crowdsourcing killing art aside) but Facebook doesn’t have that capability unless each promoter created multiple groups. Then the overhead becomes overkill. The coolest filter I can think of is only allow invites for bands in a user’s Last.FM artist library but eh, that’s a web 2.0 mash-up where there wouldn’t be enough of a userbase to make it worthy. Last.FM does have an event recommendation system but it’s focused on the next week’s events that have likely sold out.
I believe Toronto is the second highest ranked city as far as Facebook registration number go (behind London), especially in the core audience of 18 to 35 year olds. Having centralized event pages with integration for Facebook, MySpace, and Last.FM would allow for advertising using free tools (no hosting, monthly registration, or web site development/maintenance fees) that take advantage of social networking for more pleasant concert organizing experiences.
But, of course:
