Tourfilter site keeps concertgoers in the know (Reuters)
Despite the best efforts of promoters and venues, music fans often miss the chance to see concerts simply because they didn't know about them. Chris Marstall, a Cambridge, Mass., software engineer, hates it when that happens. And through the Tourfilter.com Web site he launched about a year ago, he wants to keep it from happening to any music fan. "I just wanted to create a site that worked for me -- something that would solve the problem I had, which was I was missing a lot of shows," Marstall said. "I did it because this is what I want. This is a site that I would want to use."
Tourfilter is basically a search engine for venue Web sites that tracks who's coming to town. Fans sign up, put in the 100 or so bands they love the most, and Tourfilter gives them an e-mail heads-up when that band is in the area. "The whole thing is engineered to make it really easy to find out about your favorite bands," Marstall said. Fans of live music are digging the concept, having entered 17,000 band names into the database. Tourfilter is growing at a pace of about 30 percent per month, anticipating 120,000 unique visitors in April.
For fans, Tourfilter is "totally free. Just come to the site and start typing in your favorite bands," Marstall said. "Once you put in your name and password, you can go away and basically set it and forget it. You can come back and check the calendar listings or just never come back, and we're still going to send you an e-mail if Sparklehorse comes to town or whatever your favorite band is." Tourfilter's world map includes 24 metropolitan areas -- among them Dublin, Melbourne, London, Toronto and Vancouver -- and Marstall will add another 10 U.S. cities this spring. - complete article
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