Diehard music fans seem to have their beloved bands' tour schedules imprinted on their souls, but those of us with more casual devotions may have trouble keeping tabs on our favorite artists' performance dates. To stay on top of things, you should check out Songkick, a free service that notifies you when an artist plans to play your town. Would-be concertgoers, you should familiarize yourself with this service if you don't want to miss a set.

How It Works

I should mention, for clarification's sake, that Songkick isn't a streaming music service. Instead, it helps you discover musicians (and comedians!) who are on tour near you. Songkick helps you obtain show information in few ways. The Songkick website detects your location via your internet connection and displays a list of upcoming popular shows in your area. Clicking an artist such as punk band Bad Mary takes you to a dedicated concert page that lists the other acts that will perform at the show, the venue, venue's capacity, age restrictions, start time, and most importantly, ticket prices. In my experience, clicking Buy Tickets shuttles you to either Ticketfly or Ticketmaster's websites to make the actual purchase.

Alternately, you can hit the large, red Find A Concert icon, which prompts you to log into the service using traditional email-based credentials, or your Facebook or Spotify usernames and passwords. Here you see Trending Concerts in your area, as well as the Artists section, which I consider the service's most valuable tool.

The Artists section shows thumbnails of your favorite musicians. Selecting musicians—say, Foo Fighters or Kanye West—and adds them to a list of your tracked artists. So, when artists release their tour date plans that include your town (or any other city that you've designated for monitoring) you'll receive an alert via email or an in-app notification (or both!), depending on how you've set up your account. You can also connect Songkick to your Facebook, Last.fm, and Spotify accounts, so that any artists you favorite in those services will be automatically tracked in Songkick.

Who's on Songkick?

Songkick mainly focuses on musicians, but you can find shows for other artists, too. If stand-up comedy is your bag, Hannibal Buress, Bill Burr, Joe Rogan, and Amy Schumer are just a handful of the chuckle-masters I found find in the system when I was testing. You won't, however, find sports or theater listings; I suggest using StubHub or Ticketmaster, respectively, to score those kinds of tickets. You also won't find quirky local happenings, such as BrunchCon NYC or NYC Vegetarian Food Festival. You'll need to fire up Eventbrite or SeatGeek for those types of events. Songkick is all about performers and performances.

Note that in general Eventbrite lacks the big name music performers you can find using Songkick. When I checked Eventbrite's upcoming music calendar, only one show was listed: Bridget Kibbey & Friends. Meanwhile, Songkick listed dozens of big-name performers.

After you find a concert of interest, you can add the date to a calendar app: Songkick supports Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, and Outlook. You can also use the Track Event or I'm Going options to add the show to the Plans section. Think of Plans as your "favorites" area, in which both the shows you will both possibly and definitely attend live. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell which is which until you click the show listing. Adding an at-a-glance indicator would help a lot. Eventbrite items you've favorited live in the Likes section and purchased tickets live in the Ticket section—that's a handy way to segregate your tickets. SeatGeek also separates the two categories.

Songkick's Mobile Apps

Songkick is also available on the Android and iOS platforms as mobile apps. The apps offer the browser-based version's many useful features, but they differ in small ways. For example, the Android version that I tested lets you scan your Spotify or Google Play Music accounts for artists to match against its database—and the process works surprisingly well. All 10 music tracks on my Google Pixel XL smartphone pulled an artist entry—even a song from the relatively unknown Death Grips and The Dirtbombs. I am impressed that the app has its ear tuned to both popular and underground acts.

The iPhone version of Songkick has a darker, slightly tweaked interface, but performs many of the same functions as its Android sister. However, there is one notable difference: The iOS Songkick leverages the Apple Music streaming music service to match artists in its database.

The mobile apps also display the venue location using mapping apps. For example, when I viewed an upcoming Garbage concert in Brooklyn's Kings Theatre, I could see the venue's location on Google Maps and get car- and mass transit-based directions. The browser-based Songkick simply lists the venue's location.

Let the Music Play

Whether you're a frequent concertgoer or simply want to see a live music or comedy show once in a while, Songkick will serve you well. It not only lets you view when your favorite performers are coming to town, but lets you purchase tickets, too. Songkick may not include non-performer-based events, such as the Prospect Park Soiree or Tastes of Chinatown tour, but it has quickly become my go-to service whenever the idea of attending a live show pops into my head.