Getting notified about upcoming concerts is nothing new. Such services have been around for years at ticket vendor sites (TicketMaster, TicketWeb, etc) and sites devoted specifically to this task (Pollstar).
Except that they all sucked.
Listings from ticket vendors are incomplete – they list only their own shows. Pollstar charges for their notification service when you track more than 5 bands (generous!) and even features friendly pop-up ads that bypass Firefox’s default pop-up blocker.
This is why I was so happy to see TourFilter – a concert tracking service made with real music fans in mind.
TourFilter tracks a comprehensive list of venues in major cities (New York, Boston and London seem to be the most complete right now) and allows users to track bands, explore what others are tracking and get recommendations of live events. Just like everything else on the web these days, it’s a work in progress, but it kicks ass just the same.
This service is faulty. It is based on user submissions and is missing many show dates. Either they should really get to work or stop boasting that they are doing something they most certainly are not.
September 21, 2006 4:38 pm
What a cool idea! shame it only covers London here in the UK…hopefully not for long eh?!
October 31, 2006 12:30 pm
hi irv – to clarify how tourfilter works: we only list shows for bands our users track. the intention behind this is to create a filter that hopefully will reduce the overload many feel leafing through comprehensive listings in alt-weeklies. we hope that this will actually create a better and more useful listing service. if there are bands that are missing shows from your city, just create an account, add the bands and they’ll soon show up!
that said, the focus for the site is on individual notifications – for this service we are likely to be fairly comprehensive for any given person’s band list – because we do a straight search of club websites for all mentions of your bands’ names. we try to get as close to perfect as possible on that front. – chris, tourfilter.
November 19, 2006 10:15 pm
Wow. This is an old link.
Well, in case anyone comes across this, I would add that Tourfilter is a fantastic service with many understated (but cool) features. Yeah, you need to spend some time putting your bands in and adding as you discover more, but the result is a ‘can’t miss’ alert system for the bands that YOU want the opportunity to see.
* they are up to 23 cities now
* there are views by ‘your bands, ‘by calendar’, ‘by club listing’
* sources of music with full MP3s (links, radio player, podcast)
Best of all…its free.
January 13, 2007 8:28 pm