British internet start-up Songkick launched on Wednesday with a vow to inspire digital-age music lovers to reclaim the joy of hearing bands play live in real-world venues.
The London-based website debuts with a free online service that matches people’s tastes in music with the schedules of bands performing in the United States or United Kingdom.
”It’s all about changing the way people think about Friday night,” Songkick co-founder Ian Hogarth said during an interview in San Francisco. ”The music industry isn’t dying; it is just moving to live. People really value that real-world experience. We are focused on using the web to make people get off the web and in front of a band.”
Songkick’s goal is to make it as simple to find live music as it is to find out which movies are playing at local theatres.
”I was with a musician friend sharing frustration about how he tours so much and how hard it is making money; then quit my job the next day,” Hogarth said of the inspiration for Songkick.
”I was about to turn 25 and frustrated [that] I hadn’t started anything yet. I lived for a while in Silicon Valley and everyone here seems to be doing things by the time they are 19.”
He went to work on Songkick in February last year.
Hogarth, who has a graduate degree in machine language from Cambridge University, teamed up with best mate and Cambridge law student Pete Smith and magazine editor Michelle You to fill what they saw as an empty niche.
”My co-founders and I lived abroad and the internet became our source of music, but there was nothing on live music,” Hogarth said. ”It was very frustrating. We are the kind of people that like to go to concerts at least once a week.”
Songkick struck alliances with all major concert ticket vendors in the US and UK, compiling a database of scheduled performances and getting fees for each customer sent their ways.
Songkick uses ”symantic web” software to scan the internet for references to bands in blogs, social-networking pages and other online commentary. The program uses artificial intelligence to learn of gigs and whether bands have appeal to similar audiences.
For example, if a blogger likens the band Linkin Park to Limp Bizkit, the software notes that for future recommendations to Songkick users that enjoy either of the groups.
”It turns anyone writing about the music they love into a human recommendation service, automatically,” Hogarth said. ”It makes the process of discovering live music ubiquitous and simple.”
Songkick can scan digital music libraries in users’ computers to search for bands performing locally and suggest other shows. It also lets people search by band names and provides feedback about other performances they might like.
The website co-opts music bloggers directly with ”Bandsense”, an algorithm that automatically turns concert references in postings into links for online ticket purchases, with bloggers getting commissions for ticket sales.
Industry statistics indicate that while music CD sales are dropping, digital song sales are thriving and artists are earning most of their money from live tours.
”The music industry is booming in a space people aren’t addressing online,” Hogarth said. ”You are seeing the industry return to what existed before — live music is where you make your money.”
Industry figures estimate the US concert market in 2007 was just shy of $4-billion.
Meanwhile, there are millions of bands with profiles on social-networking website MySpace but no contracts with recording studios.
”We are coming at an unusual time in the industry,” Hogarth said. ”Songkick is very much an automated version of that friend of yours that always tells you about concerts.”
Songkick announced on Wednesday it is getting new backing from US and UK ”angels” including Ticketweb co-founder Dan Porter and Index Ventures, which funded Last.FM, a hot music radio firm.
”Live music is the fastest-growing segment of an industry facing massive shifts in consumer behaviour,” said Index partner Saul Klein. ”Concerts are loved by fans, critical for artists to build a loyal base, and increasingly interesting as a revenue stream for labels.”
Songkick hopes to expand internationally as quickly as possible. — Sapa-AFP