14 DAY TRIAL // Livekick, a new concert recommendation and ticket search engine, has been made available to anyone after being in private beta for several months. The site is aimed at helping users discover concerts near their residence and also finding the best price for tickets at those concerts. Currently the search engine stores more than 20,000 artists and 40,000 venues for a total of more than 75,000 concerts in the US.
Livekick works by first acquiring knowledge of the users’ musical tastes and preferences. This can be accomplished in three ways, either by adding the artists manually, getting the stats from an online music service like Rhapsody, Last.fm, Pandora, MySpace Music and iLike or, lastly, by uploading an iTunes Music Library file. Then, based on the users’ location (the service is currently available only in the US), it generates a list of concerts they might enjoy. The site uses a proprietary recommendation engine that cross-references the users’ preferences with the size and location of the venue to suggest upcoming concerts.
It then uses a variety of different sources like Ticketmaster, LiveNation, StubHub, TicketWeb, Tickets.com and eBay, but also sites with user-generated content like MySpace Music, to find the best deals for tickets to those concerts. The search engine updates all the data it tracks, like concerts and lineups, daily and also provides real-time ticket pricing from the web sites selling them.
You can see concerts recommended for you on the site but it can also keep you updated about concerts or promotions and other special offers with an email newsletter or via Twitter. The site also includes a calendar for your upcoming concerts, which can be exported to the Outlook or iCal calendars.
Livekick offers a downloadable desktop app that scans your computer for new music, updating the artists on your account, and also has a 'Your Artists' section that keeps track of tour listings as well links to the artist's web site. The site comes in a market already well catered to but its founders hope that its new features and the little effort needed on the user's part will make it a compelling alternative.