The Idea

Just writing down the basic outline of my idea so it's out there. I think there are still a few creases to iron out here and there.

Gigs are a great place for targetted marketing. Upwards of 10,000 people at larger venues, all in a single building who all share a common interest through the music they have chosen to see. This could be used to great effect if there were an easy way to get information out to those people, say via bluetooth nodes to their mobile devices. The information sent to them could vary from reviews of other gigs on the tour, to clips of the band they are going to see, to adverts for their new albums, or the albums of similar artists. This could all link up to an iTunes like store where these purchases could be made.

The people who would be providing this service would be the people running the venue. The benefit for them is that they could use this service as a great form of targetted advertising, sending information about upcoming gigs to a large group of people who they know have similar interests, and who they know are willing to travel the distance to the venue. This part of the idea could link up to the venue's box office website, so that people can order the tickets there and then.

From a slightly less companies-trying-to-get-as-much-money-from-you-as-they-can point of view, there is another way that digital devices could be used, and to some extent are. People are always using cameraphones at gigs. These photos and videos are then uploaded to the internet via flickr or photobucket or youtube or any other of the dozens of media hosting sites out there mere hours after the event. The only problem with this is consistency. The photos and videos are all over the web, all with different tags, descriptions, titles, and with varying quality. Using GPS technology, it should be possible to work out what venue someone is in when they take a photo, and based on the time, what event they are currently watching. This information could then be used to automatically upload all the media taken by people at the event to one consistent place, ordering them by time and with user added tags. These could then be rated by the viewers of the site, in a similar way to how the videos on youtube are rated, making it a lot easier for people to find images and clips of the event they were at, as soon as they get home.