- Apple Music just added a Concerts page
- It shows upcoming live gigs in your local area
- You’ll find links to a ticket page, and can listen to a station of the artist’s music
With its latest app update, Apple Music just added Concerts — a place to find, well, concerts happening in your local area. It isn’t a perfect addition, but I instantly love it.
This feature appears in two locations. The first is via a new dedicated Concerts page in the Search tab of the Apple Music app, and the second is on an artist’s page if they have live gigs coming up soon.
When you go to the Concerts page, you’ll be asked to share your location with Apple Music so it can recommend nearby live performances, and the range seems far but reasonable. For example, I live near Brighton on England’s south coast, but the page will also show me concerts happening in London, which is an easy train ride away.
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On an artist’s page, like RAYE, who I’ve used as my example, you’ll see a subtle ‘Concerts Nearby’ tag on their image, which, if you tap, will scroll down to their upcoming gigs — with Nearby Concerts and All Upcoming Concerts listed.
However you find a concert, the page shows you all of the key info. There’s a quick link for where to buy tickets — with options to select your preferred seller if artists are using a few services — as well as a button to hear a station of their music if you’re not super familiar with their work (which will be perfect for finding new acts who happen to be performing near you).
There are also options to add a concert directly to your Calendar and see it on your Maps app — and as an Android user, I can confirm this works seamlessly with Google Calendar and Google Maps on my phone.
Plus, there are options to see other gigs if you discover this one is sold out. However, this nicely leads into my biggest gripe with the new service.
A few frustrations
Concerts is an excellent Apple Music addition, but it is also flawed in a few ways I hope are fixed soon.
Firstly, the popular tab at the top of the general Concerts Page seems close to useless. Tickets to see popular artists sell out lightning fast, and flicking through some of the recommended concerts, I couldn’t find a pair of seats at any of them.
I’d remove this entire bar, but if it is going to stay, some notice saying ‘SOLD OUT’ in the Apple Music app is essential — with options to join a waitlist or receive resale notifications, rather than a link to buy non-existent tickets.
Though I’d rather see it become a link to tours for artists in your playlists. Grouping concert dates I could check out our options for performances both near and far — as while I’d prefer to see a show in Brighton or London (which are cities near me), I don’t mind travelling (I’ve previously gone all the way to Liverpool for a gig) — and especially for less mega-popular acts there’s a better chance that upcoming concerts will have a few tickets left.
On this note, I’m surprised there isn’t a way to filter acts by whether they’re in your playlist — currently filtering is only by date and genre. I also wish the general feed could offer some advice about what an act might be like before I click through to its station, especially how it compares to music I like — with all of its listening data, Apple Music must surely be able to provide insight like ‘People who like this band also listen to Florence + The Machine’ or along those lines.
Criticism aside, it does seem like a great feature for planning a date night on short notice. Live music is always a blast, and scrolling through the general feed’s selection, I found plenty of dates with tickets left — which I could easily vet using the station button on the screen.
And the thing is, Concerts in Apple Music have only just launched. Over time, this tool should only get better, and with a few tweaks, it will go from great to perfect for live music fans.
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