Saving Live Music with Open Data

[lisabarden]

Short description of the idea (140 character tweet):

Create a definitive, complete, accurate, and open database of all Austin bands and live music venues to enable any app or website to help people discover and support the heart of this Live Music Capital of the World.

What is your project concept or idea? What challenge or opportunity will it solve?

The Austin live music industry accounts for over $2B per year in the local economy, and is regarded by many as being the soul of our city. However, the tremendous growth of Austin, fueled by the technology sector in particular, is creating rising costs of living that put tremendous stresses on some professional sectors and economic classes, including live musicians and the music industry. Fortunately, technology can also be part of the salvation. The near-ubiquity of smartphones and web browsers can be used to help people discover, enjoy, and support live music as simply as it helps them buy movie tickets, make dinner reservations, and shop online.

The solution starts with better data.

A complete, accurate, and publicly available database of bands and venues, and a complete, accurate ‘feed’ of all performances, could enable any app or web site to help people discover more live music, attend more live performances, and support more venues and musicians. Austin—the Live Music Capital of the World and a leading technology city—should be able to provide this data.

How can such accurate, complete data be collected and maintained? By using the City’s own open data portal, data.austintexas.gov, and by adding three capabilities:

1. band registry
2. venue registry
3. performance feed

The first and second are easy. There are already some lists with which to start (including a band list maintained by HAAM and a venue list on the City’s own web site). A simple tool that enables bands and venues to add, edit, and delete their entries, and even allows the public to do so, would be trivial. Of course, adding a curation/verification step would be important, so that these entries could be checked for validity before they are posted. Crowdsourcing data inputs would help these registries be viewed as the complete, authoritative sources, and a simple verification/approval tool would help keep the registries accurate.

The final option is more difficult, but very important. An interface that is supported and promoted as ‘the’ live music performance feed by the City, Austin Music People, HAAM, etc.—attached to the definitive band and venue registries--would almost certainly be updated by bands and venues more accurately than any other source. There are websites that already allow for this data entry, but they remain incomplete and extremely time consuming for bands and venues to enter their information on each website that offers this. With one open data source, those web sites could instead focus on adding value to the band and venue data like matching your tastes and preferences to bands and venues, tipping bands or purchasing tickets, buying merchandise, for examples.

Who will benefit from your project? Describe the humans at the center of the problem - who are they?

How would they benefit? Can you tell their story?

Do you have photos of them? Or quotes?

There are many beneficiaries of the project: musicians and those in the music industry, owners of live music venues, live music fans and enthusiasts, and the general economy of Austin, the city that touts itself as the Live Music Capital of the World. The music industry is what put Austin on the map before the influx of the technology sector nicknamed it the Silicon Hills. Music remains the soul of the city, but if Austin wants to keep it here, we have to figure out ways to help these musicians make a living. These registries would serve as a foundation for many technology solutions to help save the music industry.

Issue area(s) relevant to your project idea:

• Arts & Culture
• Economic Opportunity & Development
• Sustainable & Affordable Living

What is the current state of your project idea?

I have an idea or concept of a solution, but have not yet prototyped or tested it

Tell us more about the current state of your project idea.

Do you have any links to news articles, text, mockups, code, or data?

There is a 283 page report that was commissioned by the City of Austin regarding the state of live music in Austin. This initiative is in response to the question of "what can we do to save Live Music?" This is just the first step, but a critical basis for allowing for the discovery, enjoyment, and support of the local music industry.

Tell us about yourself.

What is your background? Why is this challenge important to you?

Are you representing a group in submitting this project idea?

I have been a member of the Austin community since 1990 and have seen many of the drastic cultural changes that have occurred here. I believe in holding on to your roots, while recognizing the benefits of advancing economic development. I also believe that it is in all of our best interests to help our neighbors in whatever way we are capable. Working together toward a common goal is what defines community. Let's use our technological expertise to help build our community!

[danielhonker]

Thanks, @lisabarden. Added some tags. Bands In Town came to mind when I read your summary. It's based around findability of artists, rather than venues, and it's nationwide, of course. Maybe a source of inspiration?

[lisabarden]

Thanks, Daniel. I am familiar with Bands In Town. I will look more into whether their data is open to the public and/or if it is curated. Based on my (admittedly limited) experience with it as a consumer of their "subscription" model of following bands, it seems to firmly tied to Facebook. I am also curious if they offer the registering of basic info and events for free to the musicians and venues. Thanks for the tip though... We will definitely follow up with them as well!

[danielhonker]

Consider your project accepted, @lisabarden. We invite you to pitch it at the ATX Hack for Change!

Now that your project has been approved, here are some things we suggest you do next:
https://github.com/atxhack4change/2016-project-proposals#once-your-project-is-accepted-here-are-some-things-we-suggest-you-do-next

Please send your contact info (name and email) to [email protected]

We'll send you an email in the next few days regarding speaking slots for the Saturday morning pitches. Please let us know if you will no longer be able to champion your project at the hackathon.

[danielhonker]

@lisabarden - you should have received an invite to join Slack. If you haven't already joined the team and seen the Slack channel for your project, it's #opendata4music. We'll be sending out an email with details on pitches soon.