Live-music startup Songkick has launched version 2.0 of its Songkick Concerts app for iPhone with a new feature: in-app ticket sales to gigs.
The app was originally launched in June 2011, and had never been updated until today. The new version supports the iPhone 5’s bigger screen, and tweaks some features that users found annoying, such as forcing a scan of their music library every two weeks to find new artists to track.
However, the key feature is this: “Buy tickets directly from Songkick! Get push notifications when tickets are available and buy them in the app.”
When Songkick Concerts first launched, the app won praise for solving a common problem for musicgoers – knowing when a band in their iTunes collection had announced gigs – but it relied on third-party ticketing providers to actually sell the tickets. Often, their websites weren’t optimised for mobile.
Selling tickets directly within Songkick Concerts is a step forward, then, but also a reminder to the traditional ticketing providers that Songkick has its own disruptive e-commerce ambitions.
Update: Possibly not in the immediate future though. Songkick has clarified to Music Ally that the new feature is more about testing its Detour crowdfunding business, seeing how it would work with bigger shows by “using existing inventory for normal shows to make sure we can handle the load”. In other words, according to co-founder Ian Hogarth: “We’re not becoming a traditional ticket vendor”.
At the time of writing, the Songkick Concerts Android app hasn’t been updated with the new features.
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