GigLocator
In the music biz, it's often the precocious youth who call the shots: look at Napster's boy genius Shawn Fanning, who pulled a fast one on execs by bringing free downloads to the masses, or Hanson, who were advanced enough songwriters to tease out the sophisticated themes of MMMBop. Adding more adolescent edge to the industry, GigLocator.
Fresh into beta, GL's a free service built by a duo of depressingly-for-you young Brits (18 and 21) that'll keep you posted on the latest gig info/tix for your favorite bands/venues around the world, dispense real time email updates, recommend artists/shows you might enjoy, and find other users with similar music tastes in your area, unless you like Our Lady Peace, and live anywhere. To get started, profile-up to set your preferred location(s), select individual artists you want email updates on, or pull in your full iTunes artist library, Last.fm, Pandora, or iLike profiles, and choose any specific venues you wish to track for new gig announcements, because it doesn't matter who's playing, you're going for the $15 beers and the pat-down. You can also browse and search artists/gigs directly on the site to buy tickets, get bios, share events via Twitter/Facebook/MySpace, and select if you've attended/plan to attend any listed shows, which they'll use in tandem with tracked artists to recommend upcoming gigs by similar artists you might enjoy, and subsequently propose other users with matching tastes as potential "gig buddies" you could go to concerts with, in case you're looking for a date, or someone to rape you.
Once you've rounded out your artist/venue tracking settings, you can opt to receive the email alerts as soon as shows are posted, in a weekly rundown, or "never", because as much as you love Hanson, it's just too hard to see those girls all grown up.
