jambase

JamBase, one of the first and certainly most famous online concert-listing services, released its free iPhone app last October. It was a simple affair: you entered your ZIP code and the app returned a list of live music shows in your area over the next few days. If you had a list of favorite artists stored at the JamBase Web site, it would track those artists for you. Since then, competing apps like Bandloop and iConcertCal have upped the ante with more sophisticated interfaces and GPS targeting, which lets them find nearby shows without forcing you to enter any data. … Read more

It's been a couple years since iConcertCal introduced its iTunes plug-in, which scans your iTunes library and creates a personalized concert calendar for your city.

Now, Apple has accepted an iPhone version of iConcertCal into the App Store. The concept is the same: it scans songs stored on your iPhone, then uses the iPhone's GPS to create a list of shows by those artists in your area. If you install the iConcertCal plug-in to iTunes, the app can also create a list of artists from your entire iTunes library (which is probably larger than the number of artists … Read more

The recording industry is increasingly looking at live-music revenue as one way to make up for falling sales of recorded music, and as a consequence, concert-listing sites are sprouting like mushrooms. I've been a longtime customer of Jambase, and have been impressed with Bandloop's iPhone application enough to keep it installed long past my usual testing time, but Wednesday I added a new one to my bookmarks: Livekick.

Founded last year by Aviv Eyal, who helped found video-sharing site Grouper and sell it to Sony in 2006, and his partner Yarden Tadmor, Livekick's been in public beta … Read more

Bandloop is a relatively new service that helps you find live shows in your area.

I had mixed feelings about the Web version of the service--I'm not so fond of the way it forces you to pick favorite bands to follow--but today, I had a chance to try out their new free iPhone application, and I'm very impressed. It's a cut above the iPhone version of JamBase, a long-established gig-listing service.

The Bandloop app is simple, as all good iPhone apps should be. If you've got a 3G iPhone, you allow Bandloop to find your location. … Read more

Last week, I posted about Bandloop, an online service that helps music fans find out when their favorite bands are playing a show in their area. I noted its similarities to Jambase, and mentioned that it's hard to compete with Jambase's "near perfection."

On Thursday, I got an e-mail from Bandloop developer Owen Grace, who pointed out a couple of key areas where he thinks Bandloop tops the competition. First, every venue entered in Bandloop's database is geo-coded with precise coordinates, which makes it possible to map out an evening's entertainment precisely. For example, … Read more

I've often praised JamBase, which lists tens of thousands of shows across the United States. If you want to know who's coming to town or who's playing tonight, it's infinitely more convenient than scanning the listings in your local paper.

Now it looks as if JamBase has some strong competition in the form of Bandloop. It's hard to improve upon JamBase's near-perfection, so Bandloop works in basically the same way, with a few improvements here and there.

Artists and fans populate the show database, which keeps it up-to-date--the site has more than 50,000 … Read more

If you're into live music, JamBase is essential, with a searchable list of more than 50,000 shows in the United States. It's updated by fans, so it tends to be up-to-date and more complete than newspaper or events sites. And it's a heck of a lot easier to run a search on JamBase than it is to pick up your local weekly and look through the ads and print listings.

Now, JamBase has come to the iPhone. You could always access it through the built-in Safari Web browser, but a free app released Monday lets you … Read more

Although you wouldn't know it from the weather in Seattle (colder than Siberia!), summer's almost here, and that means lots of touring bands are passing through town.

As always seems to happen when summer approaches, I've been on a live music roll: a couple friends' bands last Friday, Return to Forever on Sunday (Stanley Clarke is the best bass player I've ever seen, but the four of them together--that's a lot of notes!), and guitarist Bill Frisell with violinist Eyvind Kang and drummer Rudy Royston last night (great players doing a remarkable blend of avant-jazz … Read more