JamBase: Helpful, But Still Not Solving the Local Music Problem

After I wrote about Songkick attempting to bring an iLike-style recommendation engine to live music events, I got an email from the folks at JamBase. Their PR person wrote to say that JamBase is "a site already doing what SongKick is attempting."

So I checked it out and...not quite. JamBase seems to be a pretty comprehensive listing of live music in most cities, which in itself is a good and helpful thing. And there is a community of sorts where people post on a bulletin board. But you can't really call it a recommendation engine.

There still seems to be an opportunity here. What I want is a site that works something like iLike or Pandora for live, local music. It would learn the kinds of artists I enjoy, and then tell me that I'd probably like some band I never heard of that's playing at a tiny club across town. Or, in reverse, if I typed in the name of a band playing locally, the engine would tell me the probability that I'd enjoy the concert. Songkick and JamBase might be heading that way, but they're not there yet.

. □