See you at the rock show!
July 5, 2006 7:07 AM Subscribe
Tourfilter: Track your favorite bands. See who else is tracking them. Never miss another show! [Boston, Chicago, New York for now - other cities on the way.]
Doesn't seem to handle bandnames with commas ("Defiance, Ohio") properly. Very cool, though.
posted by sohcahtoa at 7:20 AM on July 5, 2006
posted by sohcahtoa at 7:20 AM on July 5, 2006
Yeah, I've found that I had to tweak some band names in order to track them. It helps that they pop-up inline when they're tracked. If it didn't seem like others had tracked a particular artist, I just retyped the name differently until there was a hit; where I assumed at least one other person must like the band. :)
It's beta (it seems), but it works well.
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 7:26 AM on July 5, 2006
It's beta (it seems), but it works well.
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 7:26 AM on July 5, 2006
please take a look at tourb.us. Same type of web app, but done better by a couple of cool guys.
posted by jsavimbi at 7:34 AM on July 5, 2006
posted by jsavimbi at 7:34 AM on July 5, 2006
I'll continue waiting until something like this gets built into or works with Last.fm. There are plenty of artists playing in the Seattle area over the next few months, but I could care less about most of them.
I don't want to have to wade through the stuff I don't like to try and find those few that I do. Last.fm already knows what I like. Use that information to let me know when those artists will be in town.
posted by evilangela at 7:50 AM on July 5, 2006
I don't want to have to wade through the stuff I don't like to try and find those few that I do. Last.fm already knows what I like. Use that information to let me know when those artists will be in town.
posted by evilangela at 7:50 AM on July 5, 2006
Am I the only one who expected the first sentence to be "Track your favorite cyclists in the tour?"
posted by Berend at 7:54 AM on July 5, 2006
posted by Berend at 7:54 AM on July 5, 2006
I'm a pollstar subscriber ($10 a year isn't that much) but as a Boston resident, this looks pretty good too.
I'll see how it stacks up in terms of notifications. Pollstar has some problems there--- it thinks Portland, OR is near Boston and it frequently misses notifications until after tix have gone on sale.
posted by justkevin at 8:07 AM on July 5, 2006
I'll see how it stacks up in terms of notifications. Pollstar has some problems there--- it thinks Portland, OR is near Boston and it frequently misses notifications until after tix have gone on sale.
posted by justkevin at 8:07 AM on July 5, 2006
evilangela: I'll continue waiting until something like this gets built into or works with Last.fm.
tourb.us will import your top 50 last.fm artists, as well as pull artist names from itunes playlists. That and all their whiz-bang web2.0 ajaxed chrome makes me consider switching over from upcoming.org.
posted by enfa at 12:36 PM on July 5, 2006
tourb.us will import your top 50 last.fm artists, as well as pull artist names from itunes playlists. That and all their whiz-bang web2.0 ajaxed chrome makes me consider switching over from upcoming.org.
posted by enfa at 12:36 PM on July 5, 2006
Apologies for the long post...
I'm glad to see that sites doing automated gathering of events information are getting attention. Though upcoming.org works in concept, it will never be a single source for event data if it relies only on community submissions. Automated gathering is the critical "eat our lunch" feature that tourfilter and tourb.us are offering -- I'm actually surprised that this addition wasn't a main focus after the Yahoo acquisition.
With all due respect to waxpancake, it's my my opinion that event data is the worst sort of information to manage manually, for the following reasons (based mostly on the scenario where 3rd parties enter event data):
a) Lifespan: Its primary relevance exists only from the date of initial entry until the event date, which is often in months if not weeks for local events.
b) Redundancy: Even your local performing artist coffe shop probably has an event calendar online and it may already be served from a backend database. Could you rely on a centralized event site that might list your least favorite artist's performance this Friday but miss your favorite artist's performance the next night because nobody entered it?
c) Accuracy: Lineups and timing change frequently with events. For manually entered events, a venue would have to update their site and the community event site when a change occurs -- a 3rd party would have to return to the event site and update the information, assuming they actually received it early enough to make a difference.
Upcoming.org approaches events as content, whereas the other sites mentioned in this thread more appropriately approach events as data. Event information isn't a vacuous collection of ideas that needs human articulation and tuning to be relevant in aggregate, such as Wikipedia entries -- on the web, event information is essentially a very large, disparate database which needs parsing and collecting.
To quote my own comment at Upcoming over a year ago:
What I'm envisioning is feeding either other sites' RSS feeds or a pattern/template through which Upcoming can draw event lists from other sites. In this setup, your participants can contribute events on a higher level by identifying sites that have event listings and devising ways to convert that information into a format that Upcoming can parse.
Every moment spent inputting already-structured data into another database is time wasted -- it's working hard to data parsing's working smart. I know it's not on Upcoming's radar screen, as my post last year was more or less dismissed. A glance at the past year's news entries shows Upcoming is far more focused on getting users easier access to their shakier data than making that data more complete and reliable, the API aside.
I'm looking forward to checking out these new competitors!
posted by VulcanMike at 4:49 PM on July 5, 2006
I'm glad to see that sites doing automated gathering of events information are getting attention. Though upcoming.org works in concept, it will never be a single source for event data if it relies only on community submissions. Automated gathering is the critical "eat our lunch" feature that tourfilter and tourb.us are offering -- I'm actually surprised that this addition wasn't a main focus after the Yahoo acquisition.
With all due respect to waxpancake, it's my my opinion that event data is the worst sort of information to manage manually, for the following reasons (based mostly on the scenario where 3rd parties enter event data):
a) Lifespan: Its primary relevance exists only from the date of initial entry until the event date, which is often in months if not weeks for local events.
b) Redundancy: Even your local performing artist coffe shop probably has an event calendar online and it may already be served from a backend database. Could you rely on a centralized event site that might list your least favorite artist's performance this Friday but miss your favorite artist's performance the next night because nobody entered it?
c) Accuracy: Lineups and timing change frequently with events. For manually entered events, a venue would have to update their site and the community event site when a change occurs -- a 3rd party would have to return to the event site and update the information, assuming they actually received it early enough to make a difference.
Upcoming.org approaches events as content, whereas the other sites mentioned in this thread more appropriately approach events as data. Event information isn't a vacuous collection of ideas that needs human articulation and tuning to be relevant in aggregate, such as Wikipedia entries -- on the web, event information is essentially a very large, disparate database which needs parsing and collecting.
To quote my own comment at Upcoming over a year ago:
What I'm envisioning is feeding either other sites' RSS feeds or a pattern/template through which Upcoming can draw event lists from other sites. In this setup, your participants can contribute events on a higher level by identifying sites that have event listings and devising ways to convert that information into a format that Upcoming can parse.
Every moment spent inputting already-structured data into another database is time wasted -- it's working hard to data parsing's working smart. I know it's not on Upcoming's radar screen, as my post last year was more or less dismissed. A glance at the past year's news entries shows Upcoming is far more focused on getting users easier access to their shakier data than making that data more complete and reliable, the API aside.
I'm looking forward to checking out these new competitors!
posted by VulcanMike at 4:49 PM on July 5, 2006
Pollstar is pay? News to me, I check it at least twice a week to see what's rolling through town. Ticketmaster.com misses a lot.
posted by AdamOddo at 7:09 PM on July 5, 2006
posted by AdamOddo at 7:09 PM on July 5, 2006
It's pay if you want them to e-mail you when events are scheduled, rather than going to the site to check yourself.
posted by smackfu at 8:07 PM on July 5, 2006
posted by smackfu at 8:07 PM on July 5, 2006
I'll join in the tourb.us raves: the site is very well designed, the admins are cool and helpful, and the AJAX makes me all warm and squishy. Currently, though, I'm apparently the ONLY active member in my area, so I'm the one adding all the venues, shows and bands in DC. This is one of those things that just won't fly without larger-scale social participation. So, uh, come on down.
posted by freakscout at 7:17 AM on July 6, 2006
posted by freakscout at 7:17 AM on July 6, 2006
Just learned about HeyLetsGo the other day. It seems like a mix between Digg and Upcoming... and most importantly, it's easily shown me major events happening all over Boston this weekend where others would have failed or not have made it as easy. Very interesting...
posted by VulcanMike at 6:15 AM on July 16, 2006
posted by VulcanMike at 6:15 AM on July 16, 2006
« Older Lorraine Hunt Lieberson dies at 52 | "I have accomplished nothing and I am nothing." Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
"In short, Tourfilter has tools to:
* Track as many bands as you can think of. We'll send an email to you as soon as a show one of them is in gets announced.
* Browse the bands tracked by people with similar taste, and maybe decide to track some of their bands, too.
* Recommend upcoming shows to your friends.
* Get recommendations from particular people with interesting taste."
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 7:13 AM on July 5, 2006