Songkick - Review 2022 - Gil Tweenowed

Diehard music fans seem to have their beloved bands' tour schedules imprinted on their souls, simply those of the states with more casual devotions may have trouble keeping tabs on our favorite artists' functioning dates. To stay on superlative of things, you should check out Songkick, a free service that notifies y'all when an artist plans to play your town. Would-exist concertgoers, you should familiarize yourself with this service if you don't want to miss a set.

How It Works

I should mention, for clarification'south sake, that Songkick isn't a streaming music service. Instead, it helps you discover musicians (and comedians!) who are on tour virtually y'all. Songkick helps yous obtain show information in few ways. The Songkick website detects your location via your internet connectedness and displays a list of upcoming popular shows in your surface area. Clicking an artist such as punk band Bad Mary takes you to a dedicated concert page that lists the other acts that will perform at the show, the venue, venue's capacity, age restrictions, start time, and most importantly, ticket prices. In my experience, clicking Purchase Tickets shuttles yous to either Ticketfly or Ticketmaster'south websites to make the actual purchase.

Alternately, you tin can hit the large, red Find A Concert icon, which prompts you lot to log into the service using traditional electronic mail-based credentials, or your Facebook or Spotify usernames and passwords. Hither yous see Trending Concerts in your expanse, as well as the Artists department, which I consider the service's most valuable tool.

The Artists section shows thumbnails of your favorite musicians. Selecting musicians—say, Foo Fighters or Kanye West—and adds them to a list of your tracked artists. So, when artists release their tour date plans that include your town (or whatsoever other city that you've designated for monitoring) you lot'll receive an warning via electronic mail or an in-app notification (or both!), depending on how you've set upwards your account. You can too connect Songkick to your Facebook, Last.fm, and Spotify accounts, so that whatsoever artists you favorite in those services will be automatically tracked in Songkick.

Who's on Songkick?

Songkick mainly focuses on musicians, but y'all can find shows for other artists, too. If stand up-up comedy is your bag, Hannibal Buress, Bill Burr, Joe Rogan, and Amy Schumer are just a handful of the chuckle-masters I found find in the organization when I was testing. Y'all won't, even so, find sports or theater listings; I suggest using StubHub or Ticketmaster, respectively, to score those kinds of tickets. Yous also won't find quirky local happenings, such as BrunchCon NYC or NYC Vegetarian Food Festival. You'll need to burn up Eventbrite or SeatGeek for those types of events. Songkick is all about performers and performances.

Note that in general Eventbrite lacks the big name music performers you can find using Songkick. When I checked Eventbrite's upcoming music calendar, only one show was listed: Bridget Kibbey & Friends. Meanwhile, Songkick listed dozens of big-name performers.

Afterwards you notice a concert of interest, you can add the engagement to a calendar app: Songkick supports Apple tree Calendar, Google Calendar, and Outlook. You tin can too use the Track Event or I'm Going options to add the show to the Plans section. Think of Plans as your "favorites" area, in which both the shows you will both possibly and definitely attend alive. Unfortunately, in that location's no manner to tell which is which until you click the show listing. Adding an at-a-glance indicator would help a lot. Eventbrite items you've favorited live in the Likes department and purchased tickets live in the Ticket department—that's a handy way to segregate your tickets. SeatGeek also separates the 2 categories.

Songkick's Mobile Apps

Songkick is as well available on the Android and iOS platforms as mobile apps. The apps offer the browser-based version'due south many useful features, simply they differ in small ways. For example, the Android version that I tested lets you scan your Spotify or Google Play Music accounts for artists to match confronting its database—and the process works surprisingly well. All 10 music tracks on my Google Pixel 40 smartphone pulled an creative person entry—fifty-fifty a vocal from the relatively unknown Expiry Grips and The Dirtbombs. I am impressed that the app has its ear tuned to both popular and underground acts.

The iPhone version of Songkick has a darker, slightly tweaked interface, simply performs many of the same functions as its Android sister. However, there is i notable difference: The iOS Songkick leverages the Apple Music streaming music service to match artists in its database.

The mobile apps also brandish the venue location using mapping apps. For instance, when I viewed an upcoming Garbage concert in Brooklyn's Kings Theatre, I could encounter the venue's location on Google Maps and become car- and mass transit-based directions. The browser-based Songkick simply lists the venue'due south location.

Allow the Music Play

Whether you're a frequent concertgoer or but want to see a alive music or comedy show one time in a while, Songkick will serve y'all well. It not only lets you view when your favorite performers are coming to town, but lets you purchase tickets, too. Songkick may non include not-performer-based events, such as the Prospect Park Soiree or Tastes of Chinatown bout, but information technology has quickly go my go-to service whenever the thought of attending a live show pops into my head.