how the web should work (and did in this case)

I love music. I enjoy a wide if somewhat arbitrary variety of genres and bands. in my wild younger days I got out frequently to haunts like the middle east and tt the bears in central square. I must be slowing down though because I find that I’m just not getting out the way I used to. that changed a bit in the last few weeks, thanks to some web 2.0 magic.

a while back I saw a tweet from twitter buddy @schneidermike about an upcoming show with dinosaur jr . superb. and just this weekend, i got charged up about a few new bands through word of mouth (subject of another post) and some great online marketing.

it started online at blip.fm , a free-form music streaming site where members “blip” their favorite songs from the site’s humongous supply of tunes (I miss the ability to upload my own, but maybe I just haven’t figured that out yet).

I was ignoring project deadlines in order to share my fondness for the low anthem, a providence-based band. here’s where it gets cool. blip.fm saw that I was sharing a particular band and popped up a notification from jambase.com, a site I hadn’t heard of.

low anthem playing near me? excellent! so I click through…

jambase.com turns out to be an amazing source for information on bands playing near me. I can choose bands to track, so I get alerts when robyn hitchcock will be in town, for example. I can plot favorites out on a calendar, buy tickets, email alerts to friends who might be interested – very cool. but back to web magic. right beside the schedule for the low anthem, I see an ad for another band.

trampled by turtles purports to play “bluegrass like you’ve never heard it before.” I click through, listen to a few tunes on their site, see that it’s an $8 ticket – I’m there!

takeaways –