Songkick

Songkick
Private
Industry Live Music
Predecessor CrowdSurge
Founded 2007[1]
Founders
  • Matt Jones (CEO)
  • Adam Schiffer (COO)
  • Pete Smith
  • Michelle You
Headquarters New York, United States
Area served
 Global
Key people
  • Mark McIntyre (CTO)
  • Josh Block (CSO)
Brands Songkick, Tourbox
Website songkick.com

Songkick is a website and mobile service that provides tickets and personalised calendars for live music events.[2][3] It allows users to track their favourite bands, receive email alerts and purchase tickets when a tracked band plays a gig nearby, and sells tickets on behalf of artists worldwide. Songkick is one of the original high tech startups in London's Silicon Roundabout area.[4][5]

Services

Songkick provides white-labelled concert ticketing service for major artists, including Paul McCartney, Ellie Goulding, Childish Gambino, John Legend, Kenny Chesney and The XX.[2][6] They sell tickets for a wide range of artists on their website, providing tickets for more than 1 in 3 of all events in London.[2] The service also allows users to track bands and receive alerts when those bands play concerts near the user's favourite locations. The site lists more than 100,000 upcoming concerts[3] and its database contains more than 1 million artists.[7] It also provides more than 2 million[3] "gigographies" which are listings of historical concerts with user contributed data including reviews, set lists, videos and photographs.[8]

Songkick provides mobile applications for iOS and Android devices,[7] and a Facebook application that allows artists to list upcoming concerts on their Facebook page.[9]

Songkick has more than 10 million monthly unique users, with more than 5 million of them located in the United States.[10]

API and partnerships

Songkick provides a public API which allows access to their data and integration with other services.[11] Services that integrate with Songkick's API include Spotify,[7] Foursquare,[12] Deezer,[7] FanBridge,[13] SoundCloud,[14] Warner Music Group.,[15] Yahoo! Search, YouTube[7] and Vevo.[16]

History

Songkick was founded in 2007 by Ian Hogarth, Michelle You and Pete Smith[3] and is based in the Shoreditch area of London. It was initially funded by the Y Combinator[17] seed fund, receiving $15,000[18] and has since received investment from Index Ventures.[3] By 2008 it had 7 employees[17] and by 2011 had grown to employ 23.[19] In 2012 the company became the first UK investment by Sequoia Capital when it received a £5.9m Series B investment.[20]

In August 2010, Songkick announced content partnerships with both YouTube and Vevo.[21][22]

In January 2011, the company hired Dan Crow from Google as their CTO.[19][23]

In June 2011, Songkick launched an iPhone application.[24]

In May 2013, the company launched Detour, which allowed fans to crowdfund a gig in their location.[25][26]

In May 2014, Songkick announced it had more than 10m monthly users, and had generated $100m in ticket sales through referrals.[27]

In June 2015, Songkick merged with CrowdSurge, the artist ticketing company. The combined company continues to do business under the Songkick brand with Ian Hogarth as Chairman and Matt Jones (previously CEO of CrowdSurge) as CEO, and has raised a further $29.2 million since the merger.[28]

In August 2015, Songkick raised a further $15 million in funding from Access Industries.[29]

Tourbox

In 2012, Songkick launched a service for musicians called Tourbox. This tool allows musicians and managers to control how their concerts are promoted to Songkick's users and across their distribution network.[12] It automates the process of publicizing tour dates on any of Songkick's partner sites.[30]

Ticket sales

Songkick's business model had been to refer fans to ticket vendors to purchase tickets for upcoming shows. In 2013, Songkick began a trial selling tickets directly to users.[10] Tickets were initially sold direct to UK users and could be bought through Songkick's website and the iOS app.[31] After Songkick's merger with CrowdSurge the combined company will sell tickets for more than 10,000 live music events per year in multiple countries.[6]

In 2015, the company teamed up with Adele to implement an anti-tout strategy for her upcoming tour. 40% of all tickets in the UK were allocated through Songkick and required pre-registration in an attempt to identify touts and restrict supply to the secondary market. A total of 18,000 registrants were barred from purchasing tickets, having been identified as 'touts or potential touts.'[32] Initial reports suggested this has been fairly successful, as the number of tickets appearing on resale sites were considerably lower than for comparable gigs.[33] A study from Media Insight Consulting concluded that their efforts had saved fans £4.2m.[34]

Awards

In 2009, Songkick was listed as one of the Telegraph's best cultural websites.[35]

In 2010 Hogarth, Songkick's Co-CEO, won the British Council’s UK Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year award.[18] In October 2010, Songkick won the Best Innovation Award at the 2010 BT Digital Music Awards.[36] In 2011, Co-CEO Matt Jones was recognised as one of Billboard Magazine's "30 under 30" music industry rising stars.[37]

In April 2011, Songkick was recognised as one of the Telegraph's top 100 startups in Europe.[38]

Songkick was one of TIME's 50 Best Android Applications for 2013.[39]

Merger with CrowdSurge

In June 2015, Songkick announced a merger of equals with artist ticketing service CrowdSurge. Following the merger, Songkick raised $19.2m in a Series C investment round led by Access Industries.[1][6][40] CrowdSurge provided a white-label ticketing service that was used by over 500 artists to sell tickets directly to fans on their websites. The combined company continues to allow music fans to discover and track their favorite artists through Songkick's services, and buy tickets through both CrowdSurge's and Songkick's established ticket purchase services.[40] The merged company will continue to be called Songkick.[40] In December 2015, the combined company announced another $10m follow on from the Series C round earlier in the year.[41]

References

  1. 1 2 Josh Constine (June 4, 2015). "Songkick And CrowdSurge Merge, Raise $16M To Combine Concert Discovery And Ticketing". TechCrunch.
  2. 1 2 3 Tim Bradshaw, Robert Cookson (June 4, 2015). "Concert sites Songkick and Crowdsurge merge to tackle Live Nation". Financial Times.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Ben Sisaro (May 1, 2011). "A Go-to Site for Tracking Music Acts". The New York Times.
  4. ↑ Libby Norman (April 5, 2011). "Creative hot spots". GQ Magazine. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  5. ↑ "London's Silicon Roundabout". Wired Magazine. January 29, 2010. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  6. 1 2 3 Stuart Dredge (June 4, 2015). "Songkick and CrowdSurge merge to make a splash in live music market". The Guardian. London.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Samuel Gibbs (May 27, 2014). "Songkick hits 10 million users and generates $100m in ticket revenue". The Guardian. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
  8. ↑ Helienne Lindvall (February 26, 2010). "Songkick is the big ticket in gig listings". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  9. ↑ Glenn Peoples (March 15, 2011). "Songkick's Facebook App, New Partnerships Make Concert Listings Easier". Billboard. Retrieved May 30, 2014.
  10. 1 2 Tim Bradshaw (May 27, 2014). "Songkick makes a noise with 10m subscribers". Financial Times. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
  11. ↑ Michael Arrington (Mar 18, 2008). "Forget the Movie, Go To A Concert". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  12. 1 2 Bobbie Johnson (May 30, 2012). "Songkick's Tourbox is a one-stop shop for live bands". GigaOm. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
  13. ↑ "More Than 100 Million Fans Directly Engaging With Musicians Through FanBridge Platform". Music Industry News Network. March 11, 2011. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  14. ↑ Eamonn Forde (March 11, 2011). "SoundCloud expands partnership deals". Music Week Magazine. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  15. ↑ "Warner Music Group Artist Sites to Feature Concert Data Provided by Songkick". CNBC. May 2, 2011. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  16. ↑ Jemima Kiss (October 7, 2010). "Songkick's gig listings get a boost on Yahoo's new search". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  17. 1 2 Jemima Kiss (April 2, 2008). "Elevator Pitch: Songkick wants to be the home of live music online". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  18. 1 2 Rishi Chowdhury (June 21, 2010). "Songkick's Ian Hogarth". Your Hidden Potential. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  19. 1 2 Jemima Kiss (May 2, 2011). "Songkick shows how a UK startup can have global ambition for live music". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  20. ↑ "Songkick raises £6.3m in funding round led by Sequoia Capital". The Guardian. March 8, 2012. Retrieved September 19, 2013.
  21. ↑ Glenn Peoples (August 10, 2010). "Songkick Lands Partnerships With YouTube, Vevo". Billboard Magazine.
  22. ↑ Eamonn Forde (August 11, 2010). "Songkick partners with YouTube for gig discovery". Music Week Magazine.
  23. ↑ Mike Butcher (March 18, 2011). "Songkick poaches big hitter CTO out of Google". TechCrunch Europe.
  24. ↑ Eamonn Forde (June 8, 2011). "Songkick launches concert discovery app". MusicWeek.
  25. ↑ Will Smale (June 17, 2013). "Organise a concert by your favourite band". BBC. Retrieved September 19, 2013.
  26. ↑ Dave Lee (May 16, 2013). "Songkick Detour 'Kickstarter for gigs' is launched in London". BBC. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
  27. ↑ Michael Leibel (May 27, 2014). "SongKick hits 10M monthly users, $100M in revenue". VentureBeat. Retrieved May 27, 2014.
  28. ↑ Dredge, Stuart. "Adele tickets partner Songkick raises new $10m funding round". the Guardian. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  29. ↑ Butcher, Mike. "Songkick raises new $15M round from Access Industries, expands US operations". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-31.
  30. ↑ Kim-Mai Cutler (May 30, 2012). "Songkick's Tourbox Makes It Easier For Musicians To Trumpet Their Concerts Across The Web". Techcrunch. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
  31. ↑ Paul Sawers (November 21, 2013). "Songkick for iPhone now scans your Spotify playlists and lets you buy tickets in-app". TNW. Retrieved May 31, 2014.
  32. ↑ http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/team-adele-wage-war-on-ticket-touts-and-so-far-its-working/
  33. ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/02/you-have-had-it-all-adeles-team-save-tickets-from-18000-secondary-touts
  34. ↑ "LinkedIn".
  35. ↑ "Best websites: Culture". The Telegraph. London. November 12, 2009. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  36. ↑ "Songkick.com Wins Best Innovation Award at the 2010 BT Digital Music Awards". PRWeb. October 6, 2010. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
  37. ↑ "Matt Jones: 30 Under 30". Billboard Magazine. July 1, 2011.
  38. ↑ Milo Yiannopoulos, and David Rosenberg (April 5, 2011). "Start-Up 100: A-Z". The Telegraph. London. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
  39. ↑ Jared Newman (July 1, 2013). "50 Best Android Apps for 2013". Techland. Retrieved July 1, 2013.
  40. 1 2 3 Glenn Peoples (4 June 2015). "Songkick's Merger With CrowdSurge Adds Ticketing to Concert Discovery". Billboard.
  41. ↑ Stuart Dredge (18 December 2015). "Adele tickets partner Songkick raises new $10m funding round".

External links

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