iConcertCal

The economy took its toll on digital audio in 2009, with CD sales continuing to decline (even as vinyl makes a resurgence), digital start-ups going bankrupt or disappearing after takeovers, and labels expressing dissatisfaction with would-be digital saviors like MySpace Music. Even so, there was actually quite a lot to cheer this year. The following five products aren't necessarily the best, but to me, they did the most to move the state of digital audio forward in 2009.

Windows 7. Microsoft appears to have recovered from Vista with a new OS that runs efficiently, looks good, and satisfies users. … Read more

Start-up company Gigzee recently updated its free gig-finding iPhone app. I love live music, and I'm always happy when there's another iPhone app to help me find out what's going on. But Gigzee's competing in an already crowded space, and it doesn't have much to set it apart from its competitors.

The concept's familiar enough: Gigzee uses the iPhone's GPS transceiver to detect your current position, then lists live music gigs happening in the next two days, within a certain distance (the default is five miles). You can also enter a ZIP code … Read more

JamBase, one of the first and certainly most famous online concert-listing services, released its free iPhone app last October. It was a simple affair: you entered your ZIP code and the app returned a list of live music shows in your area over the next few days. If you had a list of favorite artists stored at the JamBase Web site, it would track those artists for you. Since then, competing apps like Bandloop and iConcertCal have upped the ante with more sophisticated interfaces and GPS targeting, which lets them find nearby shows without forcing you to enter any data. … Read more

In its typical stately and slightly behind fashion, The New Yorker magazine this week published a piece (subscription required) about big changes in the live music industry. The article used as its grounding point a recent dispute between Bruce Springsteen and Ticketmaster over scalping and ticket withholding by artists, but the larger point was that the concert industry may be following the recording industry down the tubes--a prediction I made more than a year ago. The article has reams of supporting statistics and quotes, but the simple point is that the big acts aren't selling as many tickets as … Read more

I went to Portland, Oregon, to visit my parents last week and had a great time spending time with my family and checking out the local breakfast spots. I even found new places to explore (thanks to my trusty iPhone). One thing I knew going up there is that my father and his girlfriend had already bought two iPhone 3GS phones and I would not be hearing the end of how much better theirs were than my year-old iPhone 3G. But my mother and stepdad live up in Portland too, and once they saw how cool and fun my iPhone … Read more

It's been a couple years since iConcertCal introduced its iTunes plug-in, which scans your iTunes library and creates a personalized concert calendar for your city.

Now, Apple has accepted an iPhone version of iConcertCal into the App Store. The concept is the same: it scans songs stored on your iPhone, then uses the iPhone's GPS to create a list of shows by those artists in your area. If you install the iConcertCal plug-in to iTunes, the app can also create a list of artists from your entire iTunes library (which is probably larger than the number of artists … Read more