Dying to see some live music but don't know where to look? A Chicago startup promises you'll never miss a live show again thanks to an app that filters bands by how close they are to you.
Launched in April, GigScout's app lets users search for local music from concerts at the United Center to one-man-bands at the dive bar down the street. After entering your location, the app shows you who's playing in nearby venues on a certain day, let's you listen to a sample of the artist if the band is on Spotify, and currently partners with a ticketing company and allows users to purchase tickets to a select number of shows directly from the app.
GigScout works with third party event aggregators to collect data for shows around the country, but the company specializes in finding the lesser known bands in a wider variety of venues here in Chicago, according to founder John Cifelli.
"We are supplementing [the event aggregators] with our own knowledge of the venues here in Chicago," Cifelli said. "Some of the smaller venues don’t get picked up in these third party aggregators. We know the city. We know Chicago because we’re from here."
After graduating from the University of Illinois in 2012, Cifelli moved to Chicago to grow GigScout. The idea for the app came from Cifelli realizing that he was missing great live music right in his back yard.
"I was looking for a concert and was not really satisfied with the way I was going about doing it," he said. "I missed a show that I totally would have gone to that was two blocks away from my apartment. I realized that the way I was looking for shows was so outdated."
The app also lets you filter by genre, making it even easier to find your favorite music that's close by. Cifelli's team has been working on the app since the end of last year, and it is currently offered in the Apple App Store. GigScout will be ready for Android download by early fall, Cifelli said. The company has been bootstrapping up to this point, with some help from friends and family. GigScout expects to begin the process of raising outside funding in the near future, Cifelli said.
Down the road, GigScout hopes to partner with more ticketing companies to give users the chance to purchase more tickets on the app. And the company hopes to expand its selection of shows in other U.S. cities like it has in Chicago.
"People are discovering some venues they didn’t know existed and some bands they wouldn’t have seen otherwise," he said. "I think it's that knowledge of what's around you, and having the tools to actually get a little bit more information, that's changing how people are going to shows."
Image via GigScout
