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 Concert listings on the net
The publication of information which goes out of date very quickly is,
or should be, a danger area for the web designer. Too many abandoned web
pages list information from 1997 and earlier. Concert listings provide such
a danger area, it being so easy to publish and then abandon or forget.
Those who manage to keep up-to-date information on their own website
still have a problem - how does the general concert-goer find that information?
The search engines are not a practical solution - most of them are too slow
to pick up the constantly changing information, and many people don't know
how to submit the complex queries necessary to find, for example, an orchestral
concert in Cape Town on a Friday in March! (In fact the query would need
to change depending on the website, the presentation of the information,
and the search engine).
Concert listings on the net
- Canada and USA
CultureFinder has a good, well-established
searchable system which covers cities in the US and Canada only.
- Contemporary
Termine
is a mailing list operated by Dirk Lotze Musikmanagement in Germany,
providing an international forum for advance announcements of contemporary
concerts.
- Czech Republic
The Concert Agency AVEK lists its
own concerts of classical music in Prague, aimed at visitors from other
countries.
- International
Cadenza specialize in automatically
generated listings pages for organizations and individuals sharing a common
searchable worldwide database.
The Concert Web has lists of
links to other websites containing listings of all types of music.
Musi-Cal has worldwide concert
listings which look quite comprehensive, and an intriguing device called
the Gig Gopher which travels around the web collecting concert information!
- Ireland
Entertainment Ireland
has clear, nicely designed database-driven listings for Dublin and elsewhere,
organized into various types of music, including classical and opera.
- Japan
The Database of Classical Concerts
is run by the Yawata Music Society and appears to be quite comprehensive,
but only in Japanese.
- Netherlands
Live NL is currently showing the dreaded
"under construction" sign, but may be a service to watch out
for in the future.
- United Kingdom
ConcertFinder is a new
service from Andrew Ward containing many hundreds of concert listings all
over the UK. Also includes amateur choirs and orchestras.
Whats on Stage? is run by EMAP
on-line and allows tickets to be bought on-line. They're expanding into
classical (and other) listings, but are most comprehensive for theatre.
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On-line concert listings are now getting better - many services use a
database for concert searches, some allow you to buy tickets on-line, and
some allow concert promoters to add concerts details on-line. An entry in
most of the schemes is free. It's still a jungle out there, though, and
few of the listings services collaborate with one another. The best collaborative
effort I found was the system employed by Termine. The internet being
what it is, there are probably other systems out there that I've yet to
come across. Some of these listing services may develop into what we'll
all be using in the years to come, so watch this space!
Keith Bramich, 12 January 1999.
P.S. Several people have asked us to review their own music websites
in the Site Seeing column. We hope that people will submit
articles for publication here, and that they will try to write impartially
about wider subject areas than just their own site, in keeping with the
spirit of Music & Vision. Please contact
us if you are interested in this larger challenge!
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