It’s a bit ironic that I’m writing this post on music sites that make sense while getting spammed with TicketWeb emails to see artists I don’t follow in a place I don’t live. This after talking with Gabe Benveniste about SonicLiving, the concert and community site he started while working in IT at Pixar a few years ago. The “digital to analog lifestyle converter” in one of my favorite social media applications with its ability to scan my Pandora and iTunes for most listened to artists and let me know about shows that my friends and people whose tastes I admire are planning to attend.
Benveniste, 27, is not a musician but a concert aficionado who was inefficiently scouring for shows and feeling frustrated by his friends’ rickety concert calendars in the early 00′s. After dropping out of Berkeley High and leaving with a slew of new media projects for the school, Benveniste started the concert site, which formerly went by hellaphresh.com and coldchillin.com. After giving SonicLiving concert scheduling capability and the ability to search users’ computers for their tastes, the social component of the site was added and friends can see each others’ upcoming plans for concerts. Users frequently sell tickets to each other at face value, a nice anecdote to Craigslist price hikes and scalping.
The importance of reestablishing local communities is the site’s most important function, Benveniste said. “There was a lack of true connection among people living in different places who liked the same music,” he said.
For a site with 11,000 users, far smaller than Upcoming or iLike, it’s one of the most active concert sites in the Bay Area. He’s working to increase the site’s user base in other cities and to engage with people in an industry he describes as “post-album sales.”
A concert chat feature has been proposed to allow users to compare thoughts on live shows, but it’s an idea Benveniste approaches hesitantly. The plus side: instant feedback and community engagement; the minus: missing the point of seeing a live music performance and making the musicians feel as if they aren’t playing for an attentive audience.