Concerts hold a unique position in the entertainment world. They have a huge audience, with an estimated 70% of American adults attending a concert every year. And, unlike movies and music, they’re impossible to pirate (sure you can always get a bootleg recording, but people go to concerts for the experience, not just the music). But while a number of startups have sprung up trying to connect users with their favorite artists as well as new ones, few of them seem concerned with the the show itself.
BlueHaze, a San Francisco-based startup launching today, is looking to capitalize on this oversight. The startup is taking a multipronged approach with its solution, and now offers Facebook application, iPhone App, and a web portal to tie the service together. Founder Mark Shedletsky says that most other concert sites are concerned with helping users find a ticket they’re interested in, BlueHaze tries to enhance the experience before, during, and after each show.
At first glance, BlueHaze’s web portal doesn’t seem to offer anything that isn’t already out there. The site has a listing of artists and venues, along with a social network to help connect concert attendees and fans with similar tastes. Users can purchase tickets through the site (the company earns money through affiliate fees), and there’s an online listing of each user’s past concerts so they can keep a digital scrapbook for future reference.
What excites me most about BlueHaze is the company’s iPhone app, which allows users to upload geotagged photos a public album for each concert, which is accessible both during and after the show. I like the prospect of being able to share a photo with everyone at the concert (perhaps of a bandmember backstage, or an especially good shot of the guitarist rocking out). This feature won’t be appealing until the application becomes widespread, but the company says it has already seen over 40,000 downloads since its softlaunch.
BlueHaze will be seeing competition from a number of other concert and music-centric sites, including Songkick and iLike. Also notable is DeepRockDrive, which tries to bring audience interaction to webcasted concerts.
The feature looks normal for computer browsing people, but the iPhone app by BlueHaze looks something cool and interesting.
I’ve been using BlueHaze for a while as part of their beta group. Their iPhone app is great and I really dig their concert history feature – it’s cool to keep track of all of the shows you go to. Also, because of their alert emails I don’t miss my favorite bands when they tour Toronto anymore (something that used to drive me nuts!).
“an estimated 70% of American adults attending a concert every year”
reliable source (another TC article):
“Songkick founder Ian Hogarth says that 70% of U.S. adults attend a live music show every year”
——————
come on…
charcoal.com’s founder says 70% of American adults eat bbq hotdogs for breakfast.
As part of the beta, I think BlueHaze is pretty sweet and getting better every month. I like checking out the concert pics – especially those of my friends. And if I miss a show, I still get to have some of the experience.
I tried Blue Haze back in 70’s at a Zeppelin concert… maybe it was Purple Microdot.
Could be an interesting venture. I guess we shall see.
Does it need more users or something? I just tried it using my current location (SF Bay) and its showing me pictures of NIN shows in Kentucky.
I wish the the iPhpne app had more ’social’ features.
Keep it up, BlueHaze…! sounds like the service has potential.
Also… they could get a little better search on their site… simply missing an “s” gave me this:
“Search Results for… nine inch nail
Your search did not return any results.”
Is DeepRockDrive closed down? It linked to a blog. There’s definitely better sites out there like fabchannel.com or any of the multiple concert recommendation sites out there that would have been a better resource for competition like: bandsintown, concertattack, or crowdfire.
interesting considering that most if not all venues are still in the stone age with “Cameras and Recording Devices Prohibited”
note to bluehaze, if you intend for this to be an actual business make a deal venue owners and artists.
We at pickRset understand what you are saying about the live concert events. For years all of us have been working in the touring end of the music business along with being in a band. The biggest thing at every show is the fans asking for songs (enter Freebird joke here) so we built this site that does just that, find out about show, vote on the songs you want to hear, post your pictures and review the shows.
Thanks so much for realizing the concerts as being the artform that they are.
From all of us at pickRset
@chris – love what you guys have built. I saw the integration with Mayhem Fest – great job. Always great to see innovation in live music. We should hook up.
Thanks to everyone for the comments, kudos and criticism. We’re working hard to continue to expand our feature set (list) and make the community really rock.
Keep us in mind when you raise up your camera to capture that great shot of Coldplay, Kardinal, Katy or Kid (Rock).