I’ve been using last.fm for a while—it’s a pretty interesting recommendation engine. Basically, you tell it (via an iTunes plug-in or other third-party program) what you’ve been listening to, and it automagically figures out the kinds of music you like to listen to and what other music you might want to try to give a listen to. This is my user profile. There are also social networking features built-in, but those aren’t important for the purposes of this conversation.
There are other similar services out there; Pandora and The Filter are two that take different approaches to same basic problem.
Anyway…
They just launched a new feature—Recommended Events (link only works if you have an account, which is why I added the screenshot). Basically, they take the data they have on your musical tastes and cross-references that against a calendar of upcoming events in your city. And then they just show you the upcoming concerts that it thinks you might be interested in (and it also shows you your friends’ concerts, etc). So, for example, I discovered that Imogen Heap is playing a show at Webster Hall Sunday night.
It’s an automagic personalized concert calendar. How fucking cool is that?
About the only thing it doesn’t have are direct links to where you can buy tickets. Not that it would have mattered; tragically, the Imogen Heap show is fucking sold out. Good for her, sucks for me.