Building Iceland Music LIVE
When I joined Iceland Music, one of the services I inherited was called Gigs Abroad: an attempt to keep track of Icelandic artists performing internationally.
I loved the idea: it gave us a way to promote international activity by Icelandic artists collectively, while naturally surfacing the artists who were actually active internationally – as they were the ones currently on tour.
What I didn’t like was the manual labour and the broken database behind it. This seemed like a job for the robots. And I happened to know the technology already existed.
Promogogo, the product I'd worked on before joining Iceland Music, is built by Icelandic technology company Mobilitus. I knew Mobilitus had access to the concert data we needed, so I went back to my former colleagues and asked whether they could provide Iceland Music with a feed.
They did.
That became Iceland Music LIVE: an automatically updated discovery hub showing where Icelandic artists were performing around the world.
At launch, the system contained more than 700 concerts from 48 Icelandic artists across 36 countries. Fans could browse by artist, date or location and go directly to ticketing information.
The Line of Best Fit covered the launch internationally, while Morgunblaðið covered it in Iceland.
The project was subsequently highlighted in the European report Developing Music Export in Europe, which examined the work of 29 European music export organisations. Iceland Music LIVE was featured as an example of a digital music-export resource, including its automatically updated feed and location-based discovery.
Coverage
The Line of Best Fit — “Iceland Music launches LIVE hub to host all concert listings for Icelandic artists”
Morgunblaðið — “Nýr vettvangur til að kynna tónleika Íslendinga erlendis” – online + print
Developing Music Export in Europe — Iceland Music LIVE featured as an example of digital infrastructure for music export, pp. 55–56. Published by European Music Exporters Exchange (EMEE).
