Beatguide Combines Club And Concert Calendar Listings With Streaming Music

Beatguide is a new electronic music events listing and discovery site that adds sound to the experience of searching for shows and club nights. The service is already described as an improvement over Resident Advisor for listings though Beatguide currently lists only shows in Berlin. With both more locations and more features in the pipeline, Beatguide is off to a strong start.

Beatguide launched its web app in February and its iOS app last month. The co-founders, Tino Ehrich, Brendon Blackwell and Stefan Baumschlager, are based in Berlin with backgrounds in such startups as Last.fm, Crowdpark and Rdio.

Beatguide Brings Music Discovery to Calendar Listings

The basic concept is simple with an appealing, easy-to-navigate design combining event listings with streaming music by the featured acts via SoundCloud. In doing so it brings together search and discovery in one organic package. Silicon Allee recently profiled the startup:

“Beatguide is really trying to inspire people through discovery rather than giving them just texts, lists and the broad data that you see on most of these music platforms. I think all types of music could benefit from this kind of platform.”

Not that long ago MySpace would have been the preferred option for linking people to music by indie acts they were considering seeing live. SoundCloud is a logical choice now given the ability to embed its audio players as well as its strong uptake by electronic musicians.

One of the nice results of using SoundCloud is that whole dj sets are up for review on Beatguide. That makes a big difference in getting a sense of what a dj is about especially if they're not composing music themselves.

Beatguide's Plans and Potential

Peter Kirn also wrote about Beatguide. He shared a few comments and plans from one of the co-founders:

"We always thought it was strange that the promotion of events never included the music, so that’s where it began."

"We will also be releasing a widget very soon, which can be placed on Facebook or other blogs which will allow people to see the details of events and play the music from the page it is shared."

Kirn concurs that Beatguide's events are a big improvement over those of Resident Advisor but he makes a bigger point:

"To me, though, the story is a bit deeper than the particular implementation. So much of the focus on streaming has been whether artists can get revenue from it. As that answer continues to be a depressing, resounding 'no,' it seems to me that a more significant question is whether it can get warm bodies to live events."

Beatguide has already done a nice job of combining events listings and streaming music. It's certainly something I would have liked to have had back in the day when I was regularly seeing shows by bands with which I was unfamiliar.

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.