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Major Point: I think users of the site need peace of mind that they won't be missing their favorite artists in concert and know that they can totally rely on the site. This is not the case at this time because many concerts are not in your database. The only way that this can happen is if ALL of an artist's concerts are in your database for all your supported artists.
Longer Story: I was very happy to find songkick because I want to be sure not to miss any concerts for my favorite artists. However, I noticed that many of their concerts are not listed on the site! For example, I know 'The Get Up Kids' are coming to Salt Lake City, UT next week, but their concert did not show up. I had to manually add the event into your database myself (thus defeating the point of the site). Is there any way to get more event data into your database? I notice ticket master adds lots of concerts, but they only sell tickets for major venues. songkick won't be of much use if it doesn't know about ALL the upcoming concerts for each artist.
I’m
frustrated
Artists' concert lists not complete on songkick - missing way too many!
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I’m
exasperated!
I think you're missing the point of this site. This is a community site which will only be more comprehensive if you DO contribute to it! That's the point of having manual editing, it doesn't "defeat the point of the site" as you say. The site has multiple uses, only one of which is to keep people updated on forthcoming gigs. Why do you think there are past gigs on here? Some people are using it to map their concert-going history, others are developing a comprehensive history of their fave bands.-
nillabomb September 11, 2009 19:15Yes it's true that it is a community site. You mention that it can be used to show people which gigs you've been to and which artists they like. And it works great for that. However, one feature of this site is to keep you informed on your favorite artists upcoming gigs. They even have calendar plug-ins that make it easy to check for these events. This feature is incomplete however because like I said, if you can't be assured that the site has ALL an artist's upcoming concerts, then you cannot rely on it. Thus this feature is pretty much useless until this is fixed.EditDeleteRemove
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Well, first of all.. I have never heard of "The Get Up Kids", sounds very interesting :)
If all sources would be impeccable.. it would be a valid point. If, by any standard, songkick gets close to a 100% it would be a magnificent achievement.. but, not only then.
Even now as a resource, it's astonishing if look at what is accomplished. The "defeats the point of this site" and "must be able to rely on" goes way beyond what you can either expect or wish from songkick and her users (like me :)).
I read a post, not too long ago, regarding a blogger who was surprised that his content was found on songkick. Even his false info to check if songkick really did 'copy' the content.
To let the "you are just as right as your sources are" point go.. if Songkick felt it was able to get "all" concerts in a database by crawling every single website there is, the whole community structure would have been totally different. I personally believe your approach towards songkick doesn't match the goals songkick as set out.
Like songkick said "It's a start", and it knows it relies on her users (you and me) to be the best of the rest (if there even is something like "the rest" :)).-
You don't have to crawl every site to get all these concert listings. You could even only look at the myspace artists pages and get almost every concert.
I am puzzled why everybody keeps pointing out that its a community site and so it doesn't matter that all the concerts cannot be found. It's great that it is a community site, but I'm telling you, if songkick doesn't get more concerts posted people are not going to use this. -
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Hi Nillabomb:
I totally get what you are saying about people who might get frustrated with missing shows, but I think, as a user, part of filling in those blanks does come from the community and the people who join and add shows they went to/want to go to. When I first joined, most of the shows I was looking for weren't there but I looked online and found them because I wanted to. If something is missing or wrong, we all collectively have the ability to fix it. Most sites don't give you that freedom.
Just like people don't get mad when Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for something they are looking up - instead if they want to see something on there, they add it. Songkick is very similar in that sense.
Songkick is also a very new site, and there may not be as many users in your area as there are in other areas yet so that could be why you may not be seeing a lot of other people adding shows yet. Be patient and I am sure that in time, once more users are in the know the upcoming/missing shows that you are looking for will be quite abundant. :)
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Well, the strong point of the site is the growing community. And the content provided (pref. first here, and elsewhere later) is an essential point.
I don't think we disagreed with you on that the listing can be improved, but given the huge challenge and the standards that you are looking for it's technically astonishing what you need to do to get that close to a 100% listing.
Honestly, I don't think we want to disagree with you on getting more content in the website.. it's more or less the "how" and "when" we do disagree on. shivadescending had a good point when she focused on the more community functions, and I share her view (even though my boss hates me for trying to spend my time doing stuff on songkick during workhours :)).
If you know of bands that are upcoming, new or just US based and I haven't heard of them (I mean, mainstream US stuff is known in the Netherlands :)) .. I'm curious enough to look them up if they are performing anywhere near me :). It's that info you could provide that we or songkick can't which makes this such an cool place to not only consume but share. And that less consume but share mentality shouldn't puzzle you.. it's part of the fun!
So.. a recap of what you said, real quick;
The goals set according to you are that songkick has to provide a complete listing to give the users peace of mind that they won't miss out on anything.
You stated that you had to add concert information yourself, which in your opinion defeats the point this community/website. You also pointed out that myspace is a good source to get closer to a 100% concert listing.
I still don't agree on all points, but you do have a good suggestion with the myspace listing (although I don't see how this could be done in an easy and technically sound way without getting a huge pile of false content, but then again.. I don't work or touch 'spiders' :)).-
Understand I'm not trying to bash songkick. It's a nice site. But when I searched for a website that would provide me with the ability to track concerts for my favorite artists, I expected it to have most every concert. Sure, I could go around and manually look at all the artist's pages that I like and figure out when they are playing (and/or add them to songkick), but I don't want to do that and that is why I came to songkick in the first place.
I understand that there are technical challenges involved in producing a service that can get you close to perfect accuracy in event listings, but coming up with a new, innovative, and amazing service always involves overcoming technical challenges. I definately wouldn't just write it off by saying it is too hard.
If wikipedia style is what your going for (and there is a listing for almost everything, thus making it almost complete), than that's a different kind of mentality. However, that is not the impression that I got upon first arrival to the site, and thus was disappointed. -
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Hey there folks,
Thanks for all of your feedback on this topic.
I fully understand where nillabomb is coming from – we want to be the definitive source for you to find gigs to go to, which means covering everything from the big arenas to the local pub on the corner. So it’s fair to say that we aren’t totally 100% there yet.
Currently, Songkick indexes 29 different ticket vendors in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as 9 local newspaper sites. We also belong to mailing lists and use RSS feeds for certain key venues and promoters whose listings we then add manually. We’re aware that this doesn’t cover every concert in existence, but are constantly working hard on improving our listings to make them as extensive as possible.
One way in which users can help is by suggesting local ticket vendors/listing sites who have a good coverage of events in a particular area. If there are any you’re aware of let us know and we’ll take a look into them.
In the past, we did use MySpace for dates, but because the data on there is poorly formatted (e.g. announcing album releases, signing dates etc) it became too messy and confusing as it was adding a lot of bad and incorrect data.
As shivadescending, Mark and iheartmusic all point out, giving users the ability to add concerts does play an important part in expanding our listings, especially when it comes to adding those more intimate gigs that might not otherwise get much web-coverage. We hope that music fans will be keen to fill in the gaps to share their knowledge with the other users. At the same time though, we want users to feel that they can trust us to inform them when their favourite artists are coming to town, so rest assured, we are figuring out ways to improve this!
Let me know if you have any further questions or suggestions – we really value this kind of feedback.
Thanks,
Emily. -
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I’m
thankful
Some good points here from all participants.
IF I may simply add that I have used Myspace for some time now to track concerts, and more recently, facebook/itunes "iLike" app. The main problem with MySpace, for me, is that it relies on the ARTIST alone to enter their concert data. Some of the most high-profile, in-demand concert tickets I know of this year, BY FAR, were the last 10 North American Nine Inch Nails shows... and NONE of them were ever listed on MySpace, due to Trent's aversion to the site!
Facebook/iLike has similar issues. When an artist is listed, but a show is missing, a user can add it manually, just like on Songkick. However, it then requires approval by the band, presumably via email from facebook, before it's a fully-functioning listing. Also, no matter how much information one inputs about the show, the only things visible on one's profile are the Artist, Venue, and Month/Year, and notes. All other information is gathered by facebook but not shown publicly on the profile (highly suspect!!!) and there is a difference in how shows added before attending display vs. shows added retroactively. The ones that were added as "I'm Going" before the show CANNOT be removed after the concert has passed, so in the case of last minute change-of-plans, you'll be stuck showing that you attended anyway.
Point here is that Songkick is far superior to either MySpace OR facebook when it comes to concert tracking, both before and after the show has happened! -
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