Never miss another show

Tourfilter is one of those innovative new business ideas that came about because a smart entrepreneur wanted to solve a personal problem. Founder Chris Marstall kept missing gigs by bands he liked, and needed an easy way to track concert listings. When he couldn’t find anything user-friendly or complete enough, he built his own service. The concept is simple: a user sets up a (free) account, picks his/her own city, and then enters all of the bands he or she would like to see in concert. Twice a day, Tourfilter’s software crawls through live music venue listings for each city it covers. If it comes across a band people are tracking, it sends them an email, and lets them receive show updates via RSS or iCal. Entering a list of bands is fast and easy, with the system giving instant recommendations based on other users’ lists. Users can also listen to thousands of MP3 and RealAudio tracks by bands with upcoming shows, and browse recent music blog listings, organized by band. Not in a hurry to make money with Tourfilter, Marstall isn’t very focused on revenue generation. Of course, it isn’t hard to imagine this type of service bringing in money. Recording artists are seeing concerts as a much bigger source of income than CD sales, so advertising would be an obvious start, as well as add-on services such as sms/text-alerts or ticket sales. Great example of simplifying and streamlining information, of using technology to service local markets at low cost. And of an entrepreneur building a service for the fun of it, without focussing on immediate returns. Do what you love, and the rewards will follow ;-). Spotted by: zBiz.tv