Monday, December 24, 2012

Where do you get Boston-area concert news?

Some years ago in NEFolk I created a Database entry titled "What resources do you use to find concerts?", 


In search of free, accessible to all, easy to use Boston-area folk/roots music and dance community concert calendars to which any artist/venue/producer/promoter can add their events.




Over the course of time, out of the 18 entries at least half have gone defunct, several others are next to worthless. There are a couple of sites that continue and provide decent information.


Tables > What resources do you use to find concerts?

Resource vURLSpam control methodPlussesNegativesCommentsRating (0-10) / Meets community needs?Actions
ArtsBostonhttp://www.artsboston.org/Registered accountEasy to submit events. Nice presentation and display.Does not work with Chrome.9 / yesEdit  Delete
Boston Bluegrass Unionhttp://bbu.org/webcalendar/month.phpModeratedVery straighforward.Limited to bluegrass.BBU also manages an events calendar.6 / yes (for bluegrass only)Edit  Delete
Boston.comhttp://calendar.boston.com/Registered accountEasy to enter information. Supports images. Events can be sorted by date or relevance and filtered by genre."Pop" events are often classified "folk."Large readership, especially since the Globe has cut back folk concert listings in its print editions.9 / yesEdit  Delete
Combined Coffeehouse Calendarhttp://www.bostoncoffeehouses.org/Calendar/Calendar.htmlRegistered accountPoor presentation. Excludes non-members.3 / no (good only for the singer-songwriter church coffeehouse community.Edit  Delete
Concerts in Your Homehttp://www.concertsinyourhome.com/Registered accountQuickly locate house concerts in a geography.Exclusively house concerts, and open to all genre. Largest negative is not enough artist and venue information is visible to the public (just the date, time, artist name and city - more of the information hosts enter is not displayed).Not enough house concerts know about CIYH; fewer of the general public use this as a resource.6 / yes (for house concerts only)Edit  Delete
Ellen Schmidt's Listhttp://www.ellenschmidt.com/list.htmlHostedContains details of house concert and open mics as submitted by the presenters,Can be overly-wordy; mixed fonts and use of underlining colors make it difficult to read.7 / yes (for open mics and house concerts)Edit  Delete
Facebook (subscriptions, friends, groups, pages and events)http://www.facebook.comGroup membership and group administratorsEasy to use, events one chooses to bookmark are displayed in a personal events list; one can also get ideas for other events their friends are attending.If one is highly selective of their friends and group, can be a formidable tool. Patrons can zero in on music/event genres by tailoring who their friends are or to which artists or organizations one becomes a fan of.7 / yes (hit or miss)Edit  Delete
Music for Robinhttp://www.music-for-robin.org/ModeratedJust about every Celtic event in the Boston area can be found here.A subscription list. Information is overwhelming, presented in text format, one cannot drill into the data / filter as one would be able to with a website.0 / No - ended when Billie passed away.Edit  Delete
NEFolkhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEFolkRegistered account & moderatedEasy to use, reminder can be set to send message to board.Text only, but URL can point to a rich text post in the "messages" area.See sister Facebook group, https://www.facebook.com/groups/326149080751555/7 / yes, but would be better if more participated.Edit  Delete
Not Your Average Folkhttp://www.notyouraveragefolk.com/Registered accountThe potential is there, needs more venue participation to add listings.Customer service is spotty.4/1/10: Appears to be inactive. See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NorthEastFolknRoots/message/96330 / defunctEdit  Delete
The Noisehttp://www.thenoiseboard.com/index.php?s=91e8f05cf4fae5dbf75c84311880193c&act=calendarRegistered accountExtremely easy to use.Used primarily by the rock community, not used much by the folk and roots communities.8 / yesEdit  Delete
The WMBR Roots Report (Americana, Blues, Cajun & Zydeco)http://wmbr.org/www/cr_rootsModeratedVery easy to submit a listing which an admin adds to the database.Spotty hyperlinks.Select concerts have active links, Would be a 10 of more did.9 / yesEdit  Delete
WBURhttp://events.publicbroadcasting.net/wbur/events.eventsmainModeratedWhen one has an account listing is immediate; entries are user-editable.Pictures are not supported.0 / defunctEdit  Delete
WGBH Community Calendarhttp://www.wgbh.org/events/Registered accountThe presentation format is very straightforward, all events are listed by date by alpha title; events can be filtered by using category titles from a list to the left. From the user side, entering an event is very simple, but one must be a registered user, which takes all of 30 seconds. One significant difference from the past is one must enter the venue information in full rather than in the past selecting from a drop-down menu. But if one uses Foxfire, that information is available from the last time you entered an event. WGBH continues its philosophy of not censoring submissions (unless socially offensive or illegal).Images had been supported but as of 9/1/09 no longer are. If an edit is needed, the entire post needs to be deleted, resubmitted and reapproved.Terminated in 2009.0 / no - defunctEdit  Delete
WUMB On-Air Music Calendar & WUMB Community Calendar listingshttp://www.wumb.org/calendar/calendar.php & http://www.wumb.org/calendar/r_calendar.phpModeratedVery simple to submit events due to the fact that so few data element fields are populated.Censored. Only WUMB-worthy artists are listed in the "On-Air Music Calendar". Many artists' names are changed to "and more" or dropped altogether.Pat Monteith's dual calendar system was abandoned Summer 2012.8 / yesEdit  Delete
Whofishhttp://www.WhoFish.orgRegistered accountEasy to submit events. Nice presentation and display.Events have very limted display time, disappear after a day or two.Very few music events are posted.2 / yesEdit  Delete
Yahoo upcominghttp://upcoming.yahoo.comRegistered accountVery easy to load an eventNone foundLimited usage.9 / yesEdit  Delete
northeastfolk.orgwww.northeastfolk.orgModeratedSubmit by email, registered account not needed.Exclusive to NERFA members. Submissione are not reviewed timely, making message delivery time uncertain.See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEFolk/message/139140 / NoEdit  Delete

Seeing a steady decline in quality and quantity of these resources, about one year ago I took Scoop Neskir's advice ("if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own") and created a series of Facebook music genre-specific open groups where members can add and access concert information themselves. 




                (Facebook sister to the Yahoo NEFolk)

Join and participate, the quality of the information is only as good as the input. Don't see a music genre of your liking (I see a need for similar classical, rock, pop and jazz groups)? Take Scoop Neskir's advice, "go out and make one of your own."

Where do you get Boston-area concert news?







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