gigulate – blog

We said it would happen, today it did. Gigulate is launching Music API 1.0.

It’s our first step towards creating a truly valuable API for Music News, Music Blogs and (in the UK, for now) tour dates and concert tickets.  We know it’s going to be great fun to develop with. Essentially it’s going to expose the masses of data that we aggregate every moment of the day, we’ve already built Gigulate Charts on it, so we know it’s hack magique.

If you want in, we’re going to restrict access for a bit, so you’ll need to fill out our little form and we’ll be in touch:

http://gigulate.com/api

Here in London, a bunch of us will be going to http://musichackday.org/  in a few weeks. If you don’t get hold of an API key before then, make sure you come to that so you can have unparalleled access to the biggest database of music news, blogs ever and so many tour dates you’ll be hacking faster than you can say Alan Turing (ok… Linus Torvalds).

We can’t wait to see what you might find it all useful for.

Ben
x

(Confused? What’s an API?)

(Daft Punk at Arrow Hall at the International Centre in Toronto. By Aubrey Arenas)

It was just a matter of time.

We’d been working on some of the features ready to get our first proper iteration of Gigulate for a few weeks, so we opened Gigulate up so you could find out what the fuss is about.

So here’s what’s live on this release:

1. A News and Blogs index. Where you can browse all the world’s Music News as it should be, sorted. Or as a river of all the blog posts and news, as it comes in – second-by-second.

2. A Concert index. Pick a date, pick a band – it’s that easy. All the gigs are sorted so you get the most talked about bands on the web at the top of the list. We’re adding more concerts all the time but we’re already carrying regionalised listings (let us know if we aren’t covering your area) and the chance to buy tickets as late as the day of the gig.

3. Our highly-intelligent Artists and Bands index. Who are the most talked about artists in the world? How do I find my favourite artist? Use the Artists index to browse and pick it up. The list is ordered by hype.

4. Our Charts page. John’s worked hard on this. Find out how bands and artists rank against each other, add more bands to the chart or get a Daily, Weekly or Monthly view on the most discussed bands in the world. The Gigulator produces a chart of the hottest bands in the world – regardless of the somewhat arbitrary figure of downloads / CD sales. Ignore the release, this is the chart.

5. Enhanced Algorithms. Duncan’s constantly tweaking the methodology behind the Gigulator to make sure you get the juciest stuff, fastest. We’ll continue to work on this in the background to make sure that the Gigulate experience gets better and better.

Plus, power user tips: get RSS news, so you’ll never miss a thing about your favourite band, find out how your favourite blog or news source is doing or check out whats going on at your favourite (UK – for now) venue.

Gigulate – It’s the music web, sorted.

We hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do.

xx

A Happy New Year then. It’s cold in London.

After a season of excess, we’re all making resolutions: eat-less/eat-more drink-less/drink more, go to more concerts/go to better gigs, discover new music/rediscover old bands.

Here at Gigulate we’ve taken a quiet (read:poor) Christmas to get everything in order, we have elected to skip the hedonism and debauchery for a few weeks to start the detox early, fix up the Gigulator’s innards and make it super-reliable for the volume of juicy information it’s going to be sifting and sorting. Scouring all the world’s music news, blogs and local concert listings requires a fair old amount of power, and that’s before the Gigulator has even started to sort it meaningfully, so we knew we’d need some serious power to prevent a fail whale.

So that’s just what we’re going to promise in 2009, if you’ll bear with us for a few weeks <perhaps take this valuable time to enthuse to close friends and relatives about what the Gigulator is going to provide for you, every minute of the day <ahem>). Here’s a summary for the uninitiated:

1. The fastest meaningful snapshot of the music world with relevant, valuable concert listings in your area. So you can get up to speed on the music scene, or find gigs everybody is talking about in a few seconds.

2. An archive for every Artist and music source that matters, from across the web. What are they doing? Where are they? Where are they playing next? Who are they playing with? Who is discussing them?

3. Something you can rely on. Gigulate isn’t designed to replace your favourite music website. But it’ll always be here – churning through, ready for you to visit first in order to make subsequent visits to other places more valuable.

4. Informed and informative. Gigulate has been developed by passionate music fans, experienced journalists and industry experts to be an independent, unbiased experience built on the coolest web technology.

Oh, there’s much much more than that. We’ll be in touch soon.

Become a fan at Facebook, or drop our RSS into your favourite reader to stay up to date. We’ve a group going too, and we’re working on Twitter if you’re really keen or a bit of a Twit.  Wish us luck.

xx