We live in an era of music abundance, yet why is it so hard to find live music in the neighborhoods around us? Shouldn’t finding live music be intuitive, engaging or even effortless?
The following comes from Hearby, a fast-emerging player in concert discovery and DMN partner that just launched its UK-based offering.
Whether it’s your hometown or a place you’re visiting, finding distinctive local live music scenes is far too difficult. The internet was supposed to solve this, but it hasn’t. That’s because the internet is great for finding things when you know exactly what you’re looking for.
But how do you find something you didn’t know was out there?
As a cultural anthropologist at MIT who has spent three decades studying music scenes worldwide, mainly in Tokyo and Boston but also in Berlin and London, I’m interested in how up-and-coming artists and passionate fans act as social movements.
It’s very much a bottom-up view of how live music works.
Here’s one example: Tokyo-style listening bars are starting to crop up around the world, and for good reason. Just like movie lovers extol the virtues of the big screen, those of us who love music also understand the importance of social settings for listening. Music is best when shared with others.
When you ask people what they are looking for in music, they most often refer to genres — specifically, the ones they like and ones they don’t like. But if you dig deeper, you realize that what people desire is less a style of music than the distinctive vibe of a particular scene.
Is it seated or standing, food or not, early evening or an all-night affair?
Can people hear the music before they go? And people constantly want new things. Often, it’s these considerations that are more important than particular genres.
There’s nothing like discovering a new scene in your area you didn’t know about. And the only thing better is being the one to turn on your friends to that scene.
We started Hearby to develop a new suite of discovery tools to help people find local live music. After five years of development, we now work with some of the mainstays in ticketing and power live music discovery for digital publishers. We power the gig guide for Music Venues Trust, the legendary non-profit supporting grassroots music venues that provides the rootstock of UK artists.
To see our tools in action, check our United Kingdom test site Hearby.com for the most live music shows across the country, and start exploring how you can engage your customers in a deeper and more impactful way.
Ian Condry is a professor of cultural anthropology at MIT, author of Hip Hop Japan, a study of how hip hop took root in Japan and the Soul of Anime, a study of new media models, fan production and participation. Ian’s performs as Leftroman. He also runs the Spatial Sound Lab at MIT, and produces Dissolve, an experiment music conference dedicated to new ways of listening.
