Events Beta

Comment

Comment by Levi Kujala (koo-ya-la) on February 24, 2010 at 12:07pm

Thanks Tom! We're working on another site as well that will be geared towards show listings for the general public . Your gigs will be on there too:)

Comment by Tom Murphy on February 24, 2010 at 9:53am

What a nice surprise to see all my ReverbNation gigs listed on the Montana Musician site. It's nice to only have to enter the info in one place. Good work.

Comment by Levi Kujala (koo-ya-la) on February 5, 2010 at 10:32pm

Bob, I just saw your response...

For the record, I'm thrilled to have someone to chat about this with. I think this topic deserves even more discussion, but I just wanted to say that it's great to have someone challenge my assumptions and keep me on my toes.

Neither little ol' Montana Musicians or Music Villa have any connections to Reverbnation. And even if we had a "deal" I doubt the entire state of Montana would equal much money to RN. My connection with RN comes only from marketing my band The Clintons using the RN platform. To get an idea of how much the RN platform has helped me manage my band, take a look at this press release about The Clintons & RN from last year: http://www.reverbnation.com/press_releases/9apr09.pdf. I wouldn't be pimping RN if I wasn't sure it's worth everyone's time.

"The future's all about api's, common schema and distributed feeds." I believe you've made my point for me. This is pretty much what RN is. You mention most venues have a FB page, there again, that tells me that someone from each venue is getting online to promote the venue's shows. Facebook is not guaranteed to outlast Reverbnation. Myspace proves this theory (it's dead and gone). If venues are responsible enough to get a Facebook page, they will be responsible (and savvy) enough to get an RN account and enter their info once instead of entering it on their website, facebook page, and myspace three separate times (four times if they have an email list).

My only agenda is to help live music in Montana thrive.

Comment by Levi Kujala (koo-ya-la) on February 5, 2010 at 5:32pm

Thanks for the feedback April! I too like the ability to play the songs. Because I'm in a band I never get to see other bands so it's awesome to listen to all of the names I've heard of. A lot of traveling bands have Reverbnation accounts so when they come through town it's easy to listen to them if they're listed on the calendar.

If I like them a lot I can click through and join their mailing list or see where else they're playing and listen to even more of their songs. So easy!

Comment by april wilson on February 5, 2010 at 5:14pm

And I do like the fact that you can play their songs on the calendar!! That makes it easier if you don't get out much and you are looking for a style to catch the mood.

Comment by april wilson on February 5, 2010 at 5:12pm

What about a pop up? To remind artists about posting their shows. Or asking them if they have posted it yet? I personally like this idea with the calendar.. because I like all different kinds of music, so I really am not sure what band I am looking for. I could look up my favorite... which basically means any band Eddy T is in. But I could ask him directly. So any band after that.. I hope to catch on here..because I don't read the news paper.. or look it up anywhere else. Busy life. And I agree that more musicians should post their shows here.. Free advertisement... Can't go wrong!! Maybe that could be in the pop up! If you were to use one that is.

Comment by Capt Bob A. Lou on February 5, 2010 at 5:02pm

>I'd love to hear a decent argument as to where I might be missing something here
The basic argument is you can't fight the tide: proprietary formats and venue aren't going to cut it long term. The future's all about api's, common schema and distributed feeds. If you guys get a cut for promoting Reverbnation, that's great. It seems like a pretty good set of tools, but I suspect it won't get a lot of traction unless Facebook really screws up, (most of Helena's and a large number of bars have FB pages these days).

But I think most bands/venues/fans are going to stick with what they're most comfortable with, and these days, that's local calendars (eg. Lee, Bozone, Missoula Independent, Queen City News, facebook, and to a far lesser extent, tweets and rss).

I don't mean to denigrate what you've done here: kudos to you for introducing a new toolset. But it is a new toolset and suspect you're fighting an uphill battle.

Comment by Levi Kujala (koo-ya-la) on February 5, 2010 at 2:23pm

Also keep in mind that Reverbnation has great tools for Venues. Most venues can barely keep up their myspace page let alone their own website. Reverbnation already has a "site" for each venue, all the venue has to do is go "Claim" it and they can start using it as their main online portal. Let me show you how even an un claimed Reverbnation site is FAR more usable than anything else a venue manages to scrape together online.

Let's take one of the top venues in the state: The Zebra here in Bozeman. Of any venue, these guys SHOULD have it all figured out. But like every venue (yes, this is a big claim) they don't.

Myspace Page: www.myspace.com/zebracocktaillounge
Website: http://www.zebracocktaillounge.com/ (I'll save you a click, it's "under construction")
Reverbnation: http://www.reverbnation.com/venue/zebracocktaillounge

I'd love to hear a decent argument as to where I might be missing something here. But to me, this is a no brainer for venues and artists. Do a little digging and you'll see RSS, shareable widgets (artists and venues can paste them anywhere on the web) and a free mailing list tool. If a venue is maintaining their Reverbnation account, they can put all of the Events listings newspapers and events guides on their mailing list and send them out once a week or once a month. They place a widget on their myspace page and their website (if they even have one).

This, my friend, is the place to enter your shows ONCE and syndicate the information all over the web and to all applicable events listings (via email).

Comment by Levi Kujala (koo-ya-la) on February 5, 2010 at 1:53pm

Couldn't agree more. There's nothing here do disagree with. This is exactly what we all want. Now, how do we get it? I propose we start now and work towards getting everyone to post to one place.

We can either start from scratch by hiring a team of dedicated people (might as well just kill ourselves now) or we can start with the best available solution that already has the exact functionality, and the most bands/venues/promoters currently reporting to it. In my book, that's Reverbnation.

Is it perfect? Everything about it IS perfect except not everyone posts their shows there. That's the big problem we both agree on. How do we get everyone to post their shows there? We spread the word and increase awareness about it's huge benefit to any and all working artists.

The other option is to get the Lively Times to give us their hard earned events data but A.) That's not going to happen and B.) Even if we could get that, you still don't have real time gig posting, instant play buttons, full artist bios at the click of a button, etc.

It's not going to happen overnight, but none of the options available to us ever will happen over night. Luckily we know where all of the working Montana musicians hang out;)

Comment by Capt Bob A. Lou on February 4, 2010 at 3:13pm

Just as an example. Today's Helena Area Events here lists no data. Yet, by doing a little surfing, I find:

Queen City News
Jim Richerson, Classical Guitar, Thurs., February 4, 6 pm, Fireside Coffee, No Cover
Tim Drackert, Jazz, Thurs., February 4, 6:30 pm, Benny’s Bistro, No Cover

Plus, Riley's has live Irish music tonight, but they aren't listed anywhere.

If you check out Bozeman area listings tonight at Bozone, you'll see:

Diamond Rock & Soul Carabiner Lounge 4:00 pm
Open Bluegrass Jam Pine Creek Lodge & Cafe 7:30 pm
Sunrise Karaoke @ Mixers Mixers Club 9:00 pm
Lil' Jane & the Pistol Whips Mint Bar & Cafe of Belgrade 7:00 pm
Tex Tucker Haufbrau 9:30 pm
Chris Cunningham Ted's Montana Grill 7:30 pm
Person People Zebra Cocktail Lounge 10:30 pm

and Zebra has an RSS feed, but I'm not sure about the other venues.

So...my point is, it would make everyone's life a little easier (musicians, venues, audiences) if each of the various calendars and event listings used a common method for listing their events, and feeding events to various outlets.

Comment by Capt Bob A. Lou on February 4, 2010 at 2:57pm

I've held off responding because I've been trying to thread my way through your logic.

First off, bands by and large don't collect the money at venues. Promotion for an event is shared between bands and venues. And, while it's to a musician's advantage to advertise a performance, by and large, it's typically not done (at least here). Look at any community in Montana where musicians play regularly: it's the venues that have calendars, that submit them to other media outlets, whose websites are the anchor for details about the event (times, locations, costs).

If, as a consumer, you're interested in listening to music, do you search your favorite band's websites to see if they're playing? Or do you check the listings of your local venues? Or do you check a general listing somewhere (Bozone, Lively Time, any of the Lee papers, etc)? My hunch is that people start with the general listings and work their way down.

My proposal is that its in the best interests of both the musicians and venues in Montana to come up with a standard calendaring format and data exchange mechanism so that if you publish it once, (and publish a RSS, Atom or other XML listing), it can get picked up by any other venue, publication or calendar with little or no fuss.

Confining listings of shows to one or two proprietary forums (unused by most audience members) seems to be counterproductive.

Comment by Levi Kujala (koo-ya-la) on January 26, 2010 at 2:46pm

To respectfully offer a devil's advocate perspective to your comment...

I guess we're looking at it from the perspective of musicians first. To me, Reverbnation show listings do or will eventually come before events calenders you mention. Meaning, bands are now promoting themselves online just as much or more than the venues are promoting the gigs. So we either rely on these events listings that are reported by the venues, or we rely on Reverbnation to give us real time listings that are submitted by the bands and venues. Neither source is 100% complete, yet. But in my humble opinion, since Montana Musicians was built to support musicians, we'd prefer to give THEM the power to control their promotions.

I've been with Reverbnation since their early days, I was also with Myspace four months after they launched. Myspace is now all but a joke, it's usefulness for bands reaching their fans has passed. Reverbnation is hands down the most useful online tool for bands. I encourage you to check them out and get a free profile if you're in a working band. There are many more benefits to using Reverbnation than just getting your shows on Montana Musicians. In fact, at this point I'd venture to say that's by far the smallest benefit (but still worth signing up).

Might I also add that you can't click on a play button with any of the events calendars you mentioned, and you can't click a direct link to the artists bio with more of their shows, and more of their songs. To me that trumps any upper hand we might have by trying to make several agreements with several events calendars around the state.

Comment by Capt Bob A. Lou on January 22, 2010 at 10:31am

Rather than go with yet again another proprietary event calendar format, why not partner with Lively Times, Bozone, Missoula Independent, Queen City News and other event calendar providers in the state to come up with an XML format that could be parsed by ANY event service? No one is capturing all the live music events in the state: why try to reinvent the wheel? I can't believe this is generating enough traffic to pay for itself, and by being a partial listing, is only partially useful. Contact me for more info.