How do you keep track of upcoming live shows in your city in 2019?

I feel like I am always forgetting to check various venue websites and show compiling sites and also that there is no one complete resource that I know of where I can track everything, particularly if I'm interested in small jazz venues and indie clubs and bigger rock/hip-hop/R&B venues and dance clubs and classical. I miss tons of stuff I'd otherwise enjoy seeing given that I'm not constantly on the active lookout for shows. Is there an app or something that I could feed my tastes and preferences to that could alert me about shows?

I don't/can't, and I'm pissed about it. Everyone just uses their own stupid venue FB page so I'd have to follow a bunch of nonsense to catch the ones I want. The house shows all use under the radar stuff like Tumblr or Snapchat. I missed a coffeehouse show by the former singer of The Ex like a month back and am still mad abt it.

The only way I still stay in touch is through the flyers people put up at the local record stores. Thankfully that's not totally subsumed into the internet yet.

oldmanyellsatcloud.jpg

i just walk around a lot and stop if it seems like a building is way louder than the other buildings

^^ pro tip

The Bandsintown app has worked for me.

I put on my bifocals and read the local free weekly ... also I follow some preferred venues on Facebook

yeah this is annoying. I recently signed up for the Bay Bridged e-letter in hopes that it would just be show listings but nope there's always like "Taco Bell Free Burrito Weekend" type of shit in there

probably like 80% of the shows I am interested in going to are hosted by, promoted by, or feature friends' bands so I get inundated with posts and invites on fb (both club shows and underground/diy shows). Granted there are plenty of shows that I am not all that interested in going to that I also get invited to, but I will generally say "interested" even if I am highly unlikely to actually go, because it increases the profile of the event posts and also is a sign of support for my friends. The other 20% are like "major" touring acts, and even when no one I know is the opener, or DJ-ing, because I am middle aged, these are mostly reunion gigs that even the friends that have "grown out" of the local scene will be excited about -- like ESG on Halloween.

^^ so basically I keep track via Facebook Events Calendar (sigh)

I missed a coffeehouse show by the former singer of The Ex like a month back and am still mad abt it.

ohhh yah, I saw the Oakland show on that tour. A friend set it up (the show)

I will generally say "interested" even if I am highly unlikely to actually go, because it increases the profile of the event posts and also is a sign of support for my friends.

I didn't realize this, thanks for the tip

i don't have Facebook because i hate it but Facebook events does seem to be the best resource for this purpose

hahah I spent so many years running and promoting shows, and doing arts marketing in general, that I learn these stupid facebook tricks, but then facebook will change their algorithm, and promoters will learn new tricks ... it's really this sick fun game. ... also, if you regularly respond to invitations, you are likely to get more invitations, and see more posts about events ....

oh and I also listen to the local college station and sometimes they give away tickets to things.

if you're comfortable with bandsintown scanning your spotify usage and music library, it'll aggregate a list of upcoming shows by the artists you listen to.

i would leave notifications at a minimum though, cause they pile up.

I use an app called Songkick. It scans the music on your phone and/or your Spotify library and notifies you of any shows by those artists. You can manually enter artists too, but I don't think there's an option to include everything from a particular genre or venue. It catches most of the stuff I'd be interested in but of course misses anything that I've just heard about but don't have in my library yet and some older stuff that I never ripped or never had on my phone. I still miss scanning the ads in the Village Voice every week.

yeah, this is one of those things where a paleo-tech really just did the job better -- flip through a few pages of a newspaper and you get 90-95% of the shows you're interested in.

1) Look at my wall calendar to see what shows I'm supposed to play

2) Make sure I go to those shows and no others

(mostly kidding, but I'm with the "loathe facebook but still use Events to see what local shows are happening" crowd)

there's usually at least one if not more than one IG account for this purpose in most major cities, Philly has a few and so does the Bay.

depends on your interests! ... Also if your interests coincide with venues that prefer to avoid the attention of law enforcement, the old way was only so good

I was recently invited to someone's art show via personalized text, and this was not a close friend with whom I regularly text. And then I really had to contemplate the scenario, what if I sent out a separate personalized text to every single person for each show that I play?

and now law enforcement, too, has discovered facebook event marketing so venues/promoters adapt ... I think this is partly why I like "The Wire" (tv show) so much ... it's a similar game.

xp - you can actually sign up for a service that texts people for you - we tried that once at a co-op venue I was part of!

Oooh. It's tempting but I feel like I'm one step away from becoming a robocaller.

pretty much -- that was my instinct when another member floated the idea. It was interesting, because there were about 8 of us, 3 of us were Gen X-ers, the other 5 were Millennials, and the younger members had way fewer issues w/it than the older ones of us.

this is a nearly existentially frustrating thing for me… I was among other things the calendar /listings point guy for TimeoutNY music dept from launch in 1995 until right around 20 years ago… I took more pride in producing a comprehensive guide to the live music landscape in NYC week to week than anything I've ever done professionally,, including being in a pretty popular band for many years afterwards… I wanted to account for absolutely everything barring classical and cabaret…I was never able to do anything similar for another outlet, which was heartbreaking cuz I woulda done that for the rest of my life if I could…

The closest thing to this in NYC is the terribly named ohmyorckness… but it is focused on indie rock/ whatever the bushwick cohort has been judged to be into…so comedy and various podcasting big shots are listed, but not jazz or chartpop… I do think there is an opportunity for someone to really do a comprehensive guide to upcoming and weekly music listings…you could franchise it to multiple cities if it is marginally profitable… venues, promoters would advertise in the Voice and TONY because there were eyeballs on that shit, so if someone really wanted to commit to that and do it right with solid funding, seems to me Livenation?Bowery Presents etc would support a centralized operation as such…and yet I've been told by people now far more knowledgeable than I that that ship has sailed, people have burrowed down into their niches and are not interested where Kamasi Washington is playing or when Rolling Loud comes to town if theiy're into Parquet Courts…

xpost

"I do think there is an opportunity for someone to really do a comprehensive guide to upcoming and weekly music listings" as a website

yeah, it should be relatively simple? Again, the issue (from my perspective) is whether it's just traditional clubs and venues or do you include diy shows? Then there's the issue of, does your publicity jeopardize the show/venue? ... One of our former local weeklies grappled with this on a regular basis.

(mostly kidding, but I'm with the "loathe facebook but still use Events to see what local shows are happening" crowd)
same

RIP free alt weeklies :(

except for the very much alive Chicago Reader which is still chugging along after a very tumultuous few years

we still have one -- but .... I was just talking to a former editor at ours ... and the quality and coverage and contents are dependent on revenue, and the editors and writers just keep getting laid off and/or paid less and it shows and it's really demoralizing. She just got a job at the local NPR affiliate, which is actually doing more local arts/culture coverage than the alt weekly, which seems to mostly be about weed (lol California) and food, because restaurant and bar news/coverage doesn't work the same in the world of national conglomerates.

In fairness I should say that we do have a great local arts website which is basically one guy taking it all on himself, similar to what veronica describes. It's very curated rather than comprehensive, but very good. Truly the lord's work.

really the last reason I'm on Facebook

my w1fe usually keeps me in the loop on live music, i can't keep track anymore.

xxp - then we get to the classic thing which is, one person's great curation is another person's irrelevant and useless

Songkick has worked really well for me

I need to try it again. I feel triangulated enough locally cuz i know where to look, but travelling and other cities is weirdly befuddling for 2019

LA in 2 weeks. Is it la weekly? How much research do i want to do? And iceland next month...time out? Or something? Not in icelandic tho

LA Weekly is a zombie right-wing pay-to-play operation since Dec 2017

so u are describing it as helpful but not perfect then?

https://thescenestar.typepad.com for Los Angeles. Scenestar's Twitter posts set times if they're available.

LA Record and Oh My Rockness for L.A., too

I understand the "RIP alt-weeklies" sentiment (I adore them), but the truth is most cities still have them. They are struggling, but you can still find them in lots of places, both really big and more mid-sized: https://aan.org/member-directory/

So ... like ... go pick one up, read it, support their advertisers and tell them you saw their ad in the <insert title here>.

Ethan Iverson has a weekly rundown of jazz gigs in New York that's pretty comprehensive:

https://ethaniverson.com/do-the-gig/