GigLocator, a live music aggregator, launches today in open beta. It promises to offer a large collection of gig listings worldwide, sourced from major ticket providers and a number of independents too. It enables users of keep track of their favourite artists and venues while offering a discovery mechanism to help you find more gigs you might like. It has a smart search engine which knows if you’re looking for artists, venues and so on. Enter multiple Last.fm, Pandora or iLike usernames and the site will keep you informed about your favourite artists’ upcoming tour dates. You can then share the dates with friends via your social network of choice.
GigLocator’s recommendation engine learns about your preferences from the gigs you attend and the stuff you’re listening to (for example, by scraping your scrobbled tracks from Last.fm) so it can provide more accurate and targeted recommendations. And if all that wasn’t enough, it can also connect you to people near you with similar musical tastes. Never again must you trudge, alone and shamefacedly, to a Girls Aloud concert: GigLocator will let you know who nearby might be interested in going along too.
GigLocator will take commission from ticket vendors on sales. According to the founders (about whom more in a moment), they’ve been able to secure higher-than-average rates of commission, which, coupled with low costs – the whole site is bootstrapped at the moment – will bring the company to profitability very quickly.
This idea couldn’t come at a better time. With record sales in freefall, but many artists still making a packet from live tours, GigLocator is well-placed to cream off a healthy profit from the one section of the music industry still making money. And it looks like it’ll do so while providing a great service to users, too.
Sounds pretty awesome so far, doesn’t it? But none of those is in fact GigLocator’s biggest asset. The company is headed up by one of the most impressive new faces on the scene, James Proud, who pitched to London’s great and good at the Europas and again, to a less intimidating crowd, at Tomorrow’s Web. (He won the latter competition, which I was invited to judge alongside Techfluff.tv‘s Hermione Way and the Gadget Show’s Jason Bradbury.) Also on the team is 21-year-old Miles Noble.
Proud has only just turned 18, but he’s been wowing crowds not just with his great ideas but with his remarkably assured delivery too. Whatever the fate of GigLocator, Proud is one to watch.