Mobile App Review: Concertimatic for iPhone

When we explored the most popular Facebook concert apps, I said that we’d be taking a look at how mobile is changing the live concert experience.

So now we’ll get things going with the first post in our ongoing feature in which we’ll review mobile apps that are designed for concert fans.

For our first review we’ll take a look at Concertimatic, an iPhone app that reads your iTunes library to pull a chronological list of concerts playing in your area.

Here are more details on the app, and then I’ll tell you some pros and cons.

• Uses your current location through location services on your iPhone® or iPod® touch, or you can enter a postal code
• Produces a chronological list of concerts, tailored specifically for you
• App automatically scans your iTunes® library and displays any of your bands playing this week, this month, and the next two months
• Expands your search radius if you are willing to travel to see the concert
• Enables you to buy tickets on the phone, and e-mail concert information to yourself or a friend
• Provides instant iTunes® band link
• Displays step-by-step directions to the venue; and map function shows you specific venue location
• Internet connection required
• Costs 99 cents

Pros & Cons

For the last few months I’ve been testing it out — and though I think Concertimatic is a pretty cool app to have if you never want to miss your favorite artist when they’re coming through town, I still had a few problems with it reading all my artists in my iTunes playlists.

Sometimes Concertimatic pulled up concerts I already knew were happening in my area but other times it didn’t list the ones I knew were coming up. And when compared to other concert apps (which we’ll review in later posts), Concertimatic doesn’t have any integration capabilities to social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, which is a huge disadvantage if you want to send an update or a tweet to your buddies and invite them to join you at the show.

And when I asked Concertimatic’s developers what ticket service is connected with Concertimatic, I was told that it’s an affiliate of Ticketmaster and that sometimes you will be redirected to LiveNation.com.  I was told that the reason for that was just to make the service easier for people to buy tickets.

That’s good to know in light of the recent Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger. I’m not quite sure how other concert apps are set up or what ticket services they are linked to, but knowing that should help you make a decision on whether or not you want to go through Live Nation -Ticketmaster to get your tickets.

For 99 cents, Concertimatic is not a bad deal, considering what it does. But I’ve found other apps that are free and allow you to share your concert picks with your Facebook and Twitter friends and followers. So hopefully, Concertimatic will make some upgrades in future versions, because apps like these do make it that much easier to plan to see your favorite artist on tour. If you want to see Concertimatic in action, check out the video demo below.

I’m excited to do more of these mobile apps reviews since mobile will continue to be a huge part of our live music experiences.

Are You Rockin’ The Mobile?

What mobile concert apps have you been using?  Which phones and mobile devices do you think are best suited for concert fans?