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  | URL | Spam control method | Plusses | Negatives | Comments | Rating (0-10) / Meets community needs? | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ArtsBoston | http://www.artsbost | Registered account | Easy to submit events. Nice presentation and display. | Does not work with Chrome. | 9 / yes | Edit Delete | |
| Boston Bluegrass Union | http://bbu.org/ | Moderated | Very straighforward. | Limited to bluegrass. | BBU also manages an events calendar. | 6 / yes (for bluegrass only) | Edit Delete |
| Boston.com | http://calendar. | Registered account | Easy 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 / yes | Edit Delete |
| Combined Coffeehouse Calendar | http://www.bostonco | Registered account | Poor presentation. Excludes non-members. | 3 / no (good only for the singer-songwriter church coffeehouse community. | Edit Delete | ||
| Concerts in Your Home | http://www.concerts | Registered account | Quickly 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' | http://www.ellensch | Hosted | Contains 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 | Group membership and group administrators | Easy 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 Robin | http://www.music- | Moderated | Just 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 | |
| NEFolk | http://groups. | Registered account & moderated | Easy 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& | See sister Facebook group, https://www. | 7 / yes, but would be better if more participated. | Edit Delete |
| Not Your Average Folk | http://www.notyoura | Registered account | The potential is there, needs more venue participation to add listings. | Customer service is spotty. | 4/1/10: Appears to be inactive. See http://groups. | 0 / defunct | Edit Delete |
| The Noise | http://www.thenoise | Registered account | Extremely easy to use. | Used primarily by the rock community, not used much by the folk and roots communities. | 8 / yes | Edit Delete | |
| The WMBR Roots Report (Americana, Blues, Cajun & Zydeco) | http://wmbr. | Moderated | Very 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 / yes | Edit Delete |
| WBUR | http://events. | Moderated | When one has an account listing is immediate; entries are user-editable. | Pictures are not supported. | 0 / defunct | Edit Delete | |
| WGBH Community Calendar | http://www.wgbh. | Registered account | The 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 - defunct | Edit Delete |
| WUMB On-Air Music Calendar & WUMB Community Calendar listings | http://www.wumb. | Moderated | Very 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" | Pat Monteith' | 8 / yes | Edit Delete |
| Whofish | http://www.WhoFish. | Registered account | Easy 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 / yes | Edit Delete |
| Yahoo upcoming | http://upcoming. | Registered account | Very easy to load an event | None found | Limited usage. | 9 / yes | Edit Delete |
| northeastfolk. | www.northeastfolk. | Moderated | Submit by email, registered account not needed. | Exclusive to NERFA members. Submissione are not reviewed timely, making message delivery time uncertain. | See http://groups. | 0 / No | Edit 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)
- Celtic Music in New England - https://www.facebook.com/groups/253094621401373/
- Old-time, Bluegrass and Stringband Music in New Engand - https://www.facebook.com/groups/106978732745084/
- NE Country Blues - https://www.facebook.com/groups/297968820302867/
- NE Electric Blues - https://www.facebook.com/groups/161788137299732/
- NE Hillbilly Music - https://www.facebook.com/groups/413882315347154/
- NE House Concert Network - https://www.facebook.com/groups/234172836638501/
- NE Folk Dance - https://www.facebook.com/groups/300937476678565/
- Boston-Area Open Mics - https://www.facebook.com/groups/398009876914309/
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?
