New Site Songkick: An iLike for Live Music

A new site called Songkick launches today, and it immediately strikes me as an interesting idea. A number of Web-based services gather information about music you like, and recommends other recorded music you might also enjoy. iLike is a huge success in that space. Pandora takes a different path, using the information to serve up a personalized radio station.

Songkick, instead, targets live music. You tell it music you like and where you live, and the site spits back concerts in your area that you'd probably enjoy.

But -- Songkick doesn't seem quite what it should be yet. Its co-founder, Ian Hogarth, says Songkick will ride the long tail of music. But so far it's kind of a short tail, recommending reasonably well-known recording artists playing at a town's top venues. What I'd like to know is whether there's a good chance I'd like a little-known regional act playing at the bar 15 minutes down the road. To get there, Songkick would need lots of user input, a la iLike. From what I can tell on the site, that's not part of Songkick. Maybe it will be eventually.

And hopefully the recommendation engine gets more refined. I tested Songkick by typing in three bands and my location and asking for a recommendation. I typed in Tom Petty, Fountains of Wayne and U2. The site pointed me to a concert by The Cure. Not even close.

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