I’m not a professional musician, but apparently it’s a headache for artists to publicize their tourdates on the myriad number of websites and apps that cater to music lovers. Not only is there Facebook and Twitter, but there’s YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud and Hype Machine.
Enter Songkick, a concert promotion startup that’s backed by Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures. They have tons of those little widgets across the web that show when your favorite band is in town. Now they’re trying to make it easier for musicians to manage promotions themselves.
They’ve built a product called Tourbox, which connects to a musician’s Facebook fan page and automates the publishing for concert dates across the web and in sites like YouTube, Tumblr, Vevo and Spotify. The company counts M83 and Of Montreal among Tourbox’s users so far.
Songkick’s CEO Ian Hogarth said this was an oft-requested feature. “We want to make it incredibly easy for artists to take ownership of their data through Songkick,” he said. If the company can attract enough high-profile musicians to Tourbox, that should make the job of being a comprehensive concert guide that much easier.
As for Songkick itself, the company gets about 6 million unique visitors per month and earns revenue off of ticket and merchandise sales. It partners with everyone from the very biggest ticket vendors to tiny independent companies to sell tickets. There are more than 100 different ticketing partners in all.
“We’re not break-even yet but we do believe that our ultimate revenue model will be about the transactions we generate around ticketing and merchandising,” he said.
Songkick scored Sequoia Capital’s first ever U.K. investment back in March, bringing the company’s total funding to about $17 million. They also had previous funding from include Y Combinator, SoftTech, The Accelerator Group and Index Ventures.