With the titans of tech jostling for a slice of the live music space, Hearby, an app. which is “David” to their (metaphorical) “Goliath” launches in 4 major U.S cities today—offering fans of live music a platform that allows simple access to local gigs, talented performers and a route in to new music scenes.
BOSTON, MA (EST)—Area4 Labs Inc. today announced that it has raised more than $1 million U.S Dollars in seed funding to launch Hearby. The app. is available for free download in the App Store and Google Play.
If BandsinTown, Ticketmaster and Google’s new social network launch in NYC—whose name is semantic—offer you music with a corporate sheen, Hearby’s remit is diametrically different. We are the most comprehensive online platform for exploring local live music. This is your passport to the mainstream—but also to the performances you’d never find if new to a city, or just passing through. It’s your passport to what’s authentic.
Hearby provides information on more live music shows in Boston, New York City, San Francisco and the Bay Area, and Austin than any other source, reaching across the diverse music scenes: from pedal guitarists to techno DJs; from hip-hop ciphers to Irish jam sessions; from experimental sound artists to cover bands.
With this funding, Hearby will expand across major cities across the US as well as internationally in the coming months.
“We founded Hearby so we could more easily find live music nearby.” said Gary Halliwell, successful data entrepreneur and CEO, and co-founder of Area4 Labs. “It is both time consuming and frustrating finding what shows are going on. As all analysts know, major players like Google and Facebook are catching on” Halliwell guffaws, stating that “more competition in the market place long overdue” the tech entrepreneur muses. Although Halliwell is quick to qualify this with “Although we all know that the major player tend to fall flat on their faces when it comes to understanding the local live music scene.”
This gap in the media landscape is what drove Halliwell and co-founders Michael Devlin and Ian Condry, to begin creating an alternative to the big players in Hearby, with pre-emptive development work beginning more than 18 months ago. While it’s easy to find headliner artists playing major venues, as the aforementioned failures in the live music ecosystem know there are a kaleidoscope of scenes and genres to chose from at the many smaller, more intimate venues where up-and-coming artists can be found.
Along with the associated website Hear.by, the Hearby app is a new kind of digital guide to show details, artist information and links, as well as recommendations and reviews from a demographic who find sharing their data with technology companies creepy.
“At Hearby, we believe music is about connecting people,” said co-founder Ian Condry, a professor of cultural anthropology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in how cultural movements go from from local to global. “The magic of live music emerges from dynamic, sometimes unexpected, social experiences. Other businesses focus primarily on selling you a ticket; our mission is to help you find your musical adventures. It’s the most interesting kind of data problem because it’s about social matching.” Condry added.
"Musicians are at the forefront of rapid and dramatic changes, as earnings from recordings have become less important than live performances which is now the source of the vast majority of musician’s livelihoods", commented Panos Panay, senior vice president for global strategy and innovation at the Berklee College of Music, and founding managing director of the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurships who is an advisor to Hearby. "We live an age of music abundance. It’s precisely the changes wrought by the digital present that make going to see live music valuable to a variety stakeholders in new ways." He added.
The implications are enormous said co-founder Michael Devlin, ex-head of digital strategy at Johnson & Johnson, who has spent his career building data-driven strategies and decision-making systems in global organizations. “We see the greater distribution and dissemination of this information in today’s array of digital channels as our business,” said Devlin. “We’ve watched this industry’s valuation climb in to billions of dollars since we began development. The big players’ reaction already hints that they know we’re onto something”.
The Hearby app and the website offer a revolutionary live music exploration platform that removes the friction in finding shows in the community. If you’re planning a fun night out exploring music options with friends in your neighborhood, or a visitor eager to a new city, Hearby offers the most live music experiences to explore. “Much more” Halliwell adds, “Than our competitors”.