Bandcamp Partners With Songkick
Rather than create yet another place that artists have to post their live performance listings, music sales and marketing platform Bandcamp has partnered with Songkick.
Songkick already collects shows data from ticket vendors and venues globally, and provides that data to Bandcamp (as well as YouTube, HypeMachine, Yahoo, and others). and they appear automatially on the artist's Bandcamp profile page. If a show is missin you can add it via Songkick.
“Rather than create yet another place that artists have to post their live performance listings…Bandcamp has partnered with Songkick.”
but…
“If a show is missin you can add it via Songkick.”
So, it sounds like if I want ALL my shows to be listed on my Bandcamp site (songkick has limited listings for indie bands), I have to register for Songkick now.
In other words, this is the exact opposite of not having to sign up for another site.
Do companies like Bandcamp think that this kind of spin actually works on intelligent people?
Why not just say “Bandcamp is adding concert listings, but ONLY if your concerts are listed on a 3rd party site called songkick.” That would be a more accurate headline.
I’m not entirely sure why Bandcamp would want to push all of their users to register for a songkick account (seems like giving away their customer relationships to me). It would be great if hypebot would dig into strategic questions like that when they get this type of announcement.
You don’t need an artist account on Songkick — just a user account. It’s not like MySpace where you have to maintain a presence or page. I manage a band and most all of our shows are picked up by Songkick, just not the little ones that are in coffee shops and don’t have tickets associated with them. You can always email dates to Songkick, too, if you know about them and they don’t.
“You don’t need an artist account on Songkick — just a user account.”
That’s exactly what I don’t want to have to do. And its the exact opposite of what the spin of this article is trying to suggest.
I can totally understand that you are stepping out to defend them by suggesting that it isn’t that big a deal. It likely isn’t.
But I resent the approach taken here to suggest that this won’t require artists to register for yet another site. That is just factually incorrect for the majority of artists. Why not be honest and say that it WILL require artists to register for another site, but its not that big a deal?
Can we get honesty from one of these companies instead of spin? Is that too much to ask?
The point of the Songkick partnership is that most shows will be picked up without the band having to enter them – but provides the option to do so if they are missing.
Yawn…
I think this is great for the semi-established acts + who are playing well known venues, but for underground artists it sounds a bit of a pain
I’m struggling to figure out what this article is about. I’m also wondering why the last time I wrote a critical comment like this one it was erased along with a bunch of others. We should all accept some criticism.