Could probably do a google maps mashup...

sorry i'm a little bit simple,

whats a google maps mash-up?

If its what i think it is and using the google maps would be useful for showing the location of the venues, and of course there are many other options for that aswell.

could you please expand on it, its kind of leading me in circles

anyway thanks for the quick comment on the idea.

lol, "a little bit simple" Callum. Ha, another idea Callum! When did this one arrive? Pre or post Concept? :P

:)

well since its a internet idea it was pre Concept but i thought it was pointless to put across.

Anyway here it is in all its glory, anybody got any ideas to add to it?

Why woudn't a band do this on it's on website (this could generate a lot of traffic).
Tommy

a band could do this on their website.

Spice girls tried it for their come-back tour. Only a few votes separated the girls from visiting Baghdad on their tour.

This shows that the system can be abused by haters of the band.

With Please Play Here, you pre-register where you live and the band can choose what parts of the country/world they want to and don't want to visit.

Also with Please Play Here, you'll be able to choose an exact venue to visit not just the country. This would be much more appreciated by smaller bands (which will make up the majority of the market.)

This is actually a pretty good idea. Kind of like social or viral marketing. It could also be a way for managers or promoters to do some market research.

I'm sure big-time acts already have the research data to support the best ROI for a show in any given city, but this may be useful for smaller acts who do not have the research data available.

Thanks for the feedback! My first positive comment about the idea :)

you don't know how much it means!

anyway yes, smaller acts will probably be the main focus of the website however if we can gear up the website to house big-names it will mean more fans will become a member with the site.

Once again thank you

hey! the first one wasn't a negative comment, and I spose mine wasn't possitive, but i DO think it's a very good idea!

I rather like this idea! It's a great blend of providing crucial marketing information to bands/musical performers as well as cutting some of the heavy work in logistics/stats sorting. Great work!

this should be a facebook app.

maybe i could implement it as a facebook app as well

i never thought of doing that, thanks for the idea.

I don't think 'facebook app' is the magic solution to every problem... yes you might allow people to interface with your site through something like that but I think you'd still want the main site to exist first so that you can provide more content.

I think it's a good idea though. One of the challenges you'll face will be getting enough people to vote, but then you might have an advantage there if you can persuade bands to advertise "go here and vote on our tour venues" on their websites etc.

this is a great idea!

thanks for constructive comment PhilipH

yes i agree with you with the facebook app statement, it will be more of an add-on to the site not an integral part of it.

Its always hard to drag people any website. But if bands are paying for the service it would be them that's wasting their own money if they don't promote the site. Maybe there should be some kind of toolbox so its easier for bands to promote their new unplanned tour.

YES callum. Top of the (CH) Pops.
I know you say it's not like Myspace, but would it incorperate any of that kind of thing, IE they can put some tracks/vids up?

Great idea. One suggestion though - don't make the bands pay up front, if anything you should be approaching bands and offering to pay them in exchange for promoting your site to their fans. They already have access to and influence over your target audience, focus on making it as valuable and frictionless as possible to the bands and they will drive the users to the site. Just think of it as a customer aquisition or marketing cost, which is very important to this site as it is not very valuable until you reach a critical mass of users.

Thats a good idea Jamie. However it means alot more time and effort into something that's already available. maybe after the site is running we could add such features like this.

Thanks for your comment thecougar, as its something I've been thinking alot about. I still think that bands should have to pay to be entered into the database, however if (thinking really IF here) i can strike some kind of deal with a major recording studio or band, at a very discount price if not free. It will gain some attention to the wesbite along with the fans. However it will also been seen by bands across world and might encourage them to pay-up to use this service.

thanks everyone for your kind words!

It's funny, I was thinking that iLike needed just something like this! Great idea and hope it goes on to make you proud.

i can see this marketed as an add-on for a band's myspace or regular webpage, but as a standalone seems too hard to pitch

i see where your coming from, but i disagree. However maybe its a function we could sell to myspace or do a partnership with them.

In other news! We have a new logo courtesy of Unionjackson!

how incredible is it?!

I'm really wanting to go for this idea and I've also tracked down a potential creator/developer for the website and database, however it comes with a hefty price-tag.

I will be placing this idea as a business as soon as this weeks voting has finished. If you want to become a part of this idea you will have to wait until then.

Generic tools are already used for this: http://www.petitiono...azin01/petition.html

its really a generic tool, the site you gave me was just people signing a petition on a band that split up ages ago. i don't see how this is affecting my idea accept showing there is a need for a website like please play here.

can you please clarify what you meant.

Clarification:

> generic tool

Generic is better than specific if it does not degrade the service. A generic petition site seems better to me than a bunch of specific ones.

> a band that split up ages ago

That's just an example set to show that people already did such a petition, and can create similar (or even different) new ones.

i think your missing the point of this idea. its the bands that ask the members where to go not the crowd telling them where to go.

there's a big difference

anyway thanks for putting the point across.

> its the bands that ask the members where to go

Your description "Please Play Here is a site where fans from all over the world can show their favourite bands that they want them to visit their local venue." seems somewhat misleading to me.

It may work if each vote is somewhat tying the fan up, I mean for example by asking him/her to pay one refundable buck. In any other case some fans will register many accounts (several accounts per person) and massively vote, just for the fun of having the band at home. Without an adequate anti-fraud protection there will be no vote (or a fake one), because the band manager won't allow it (he does not want to see a comp-wiz programming a bot creating accounts, answering to mail challenges and massively vote, maybe thru proxies, in order to have a gig for him and his few friends in some remote suburb!).

It will never happen for a band to visit some remote suburb. If you read the example, you will find that the band gets to choose their minimum and maximum capacity. This will be to what the band is used to playing to.

There are ways to stop bots, and ban multiple accounts by the same user.

Sorry for the misleading header i'll edit soon. anyway thanks for the comment. Please let me know anything else that you don't like about my idea and i'll try and sort it out. (it is idea 2.0 after all :)!)

> It will never happen for a band to visit some remote suburb

A venue is not necessarily full at gig time. The very purpose of the vote is to predict how many people will come. If there is fraud, less people than planned will come, money and reputation will be lost/damaged and no one will be accountable.

> There are ways to stop bots, and ban multiple accounts by the same user.

Nope. Anyone can use multiple clients (virtualization software and anonymizing proxies make it easy) and obtain from his friends a redirection (search for 'netcat', and so on) from their ADSL boxes, to let the distant webserver 'think' that any fake user (sock puppet) is connected from one of those boxes. There is no way to counter this. Hey, I bet that as soon as some serious voting like this will be put online, easy-to-use software 'cheaters' kits will blossom. Moreover, for serious players, our usual bunch of friendly spam senders (from Korea, Russia...), controlling netbots (of zombies PC), are ready to sell anything. Imagine 10000 virtualized web clients on 10000 different IP in 10000 different blocks, rented for a few hours each day for a bunch of days. No problem, no big deal. Maybe a couple of grands. They may even be ready to sell software robot programming (just as those now spamming blogs and wikis) or human operators, to simulate activity on the site. That's trivial stuff thanks to many languages and libraries (see the Perl module 'WWW::Mechanize').

Bottomline: without proper identification or deterrent fee any Web vote-based approach is a joke. This is not specific to your project.

If there is nothing really expensive at stake (Ideawarz...) or with a few hundred votes casted there is no real problem. But when it comes to real money and competition, for example between bands... Setting a gig up costs and the outcome (how many people in the audience?) are serious stakes so some jokers, competitors or censors may find handy to be able, for nearly nothing, to let the band play before a mostly empty room.

There is, right now, no such open Web-voting for real stake because every IT-security professional (yep, I'm such beastie) knows that this just can't work right now and, in companies, as soon as one comes with such an idea someone skilled stops the project at early stage.

We have to see a serious proposal for a sure, practical and robust online open voting system. Without it many interesting projects, yours included, are plain dead.

Great job responding to everyone's feedback and questions.

Unless participation was very large, the decisions would probably not be as good as conventional marketing studies, even if nobody gamed the system. If I start a fan club, and get five fellow members to visit the site, that might weigh the results for a non top tier band.

Back with natmakas comments :)

For the first statement. The idea isn't to fill up the venues with potential people who want to go, that would take an awful long time. The idea is to show where the majority of the fans are and where they want them to play. I mean sometimes the people who turn out to gigs aren't necessarily die-hard fans but if they're playing local they will attend i even know people who would pay to see a band that they've only heard of that day. So the site is aimed at the die-hard fans that really want their favourite band to play locally. The band can then use the statistics how they like.

To the second comment. I can see where your coming form with this. All i can propose is that we could use kapatcha (i think that's how you spell it - the little box with the scrambled letters in it) and email validation and that's as far as my knowledge of this can go really.

there are a few ideas i've come up to try and combat this.

> Members given higher voting power for activity.

> Sign-up page done in flash, So sign-up field boxes can be put in random positions making a bot much harder to make.

> With the flash sign-up you could implement a bit of interactivity like click the dots, like 3-5 dots will appear on the screen and the user must click them stopping bots once again.

> A lengthy but fun sign-up process that will engage actual users and confuse and bemuse bots, and the length of the process will minimise people creating multiple accounts using fake email addresses.

If you have any ideas on how i can get around this problem please say!

Anyway thank you groundload it means alot after taking quite a beating from my idea!

If you find a problem with the idea please speak up but also can you try and think of a way round it to help me. after all its web 2.0 and i can't do it by myself!

what friendly logo Unionjackson!

> The idea isn't to fill up the venues
> The idea is to show where the majority of the fans are

I can't grasp any difference. Ultimately the band wants to fill the biggest possible room and as far as I know the approximative share of gig tickets sold to die-hard fans is the same everywhere(?)

> we could use kapatcha

Most are broken. There is even public information about this: http://sam.zoy.org/pwntcha/ , you can imagine what professional spammers, ready to sell their services, are able to do.

Worse: some pay people (mostly living in third-countries) to fill captchas, in order to publish their spam (or, with such a system, to vote in order to disrupt a competing band)

Even worse: some have a system enabling them to satisfy the captcha for an incredibly low cost. They simply have their own websites (often porn) asking the visitor to satisfy a captcha in order to see the next document (picture/film/whatever). And the proposed captcha is the one used by the 'protected' (attacked) site. In other word they lure third parties into satisfying the captcha for them. Rock-solid, cheap and very efficient.

The rule applies there: captchas will keep most jokers at bay as long as there is few at stake.

> email validation

Nope. Anyone can simply create many accounts on GMail or on any other similar service.

> there are a few ideas i've come up to try and combat this.

Forget about it, as it doesn't work. As soon as there will be a stake any open online voting system is doomed, and I'm waiting for some a serious way to avoid this.

Please understand me: I'm sorry and willing to have a solution. But, for the time being, there is none.

> Members given higher voting power for activity.

Deterrent fees are efficient, to a given point. In your system it will be adequate if most die-hard fans are ready to subscribe or (better) already are members.

> Sign-up page done in flash, So sign-up field boxes can be put in random positions making a bot much harder to make.

The anti-captchas listed above defeat this

> A lengthy but fun sign-up process that will engage actual users and confuse and bemuse bots

It discourages many honest visitors.

> Anyway thank you groundload it means alot after taking quite a beating from my idea!

If I see a problem I write about it, but feel free to neglect it. I'm sorry, but I have no doubt: I'm right on this.

> If you find a problem with the idea please speak up but also can you try and think of a way round it to help me

This is a classic problem, many searched for a solution, everybody is waiting for it.

BTW the idea was already implemented: http://www.tourvote.com/ ( by http://www.demandid.com/ )
AFAIK since approx 2001. Albeit sighted by E. Dyson herself... it did not cause any revolution nor evolution.

This doomed, pal. I'm sorry, but open online voting leads, at least for now, nowhere.

thanks for your comment once again.

I think your idea of making it a members only vote is very useful. I think i will use.

And about what i said about my idea getting a beating, thats a good thing, it means i'm having to think of ways to combat the problems your giving me. And for that i thank you!

Tourvote is using the petition sort of idea. Making the fans choose where they want to see their favourite bands perform without the knowledge of bands. So for that's its fans in charge. with Please Play here its the band that's signing up to encourage fans to tell them where to go. Its also a horrible looking website.

You say its doomed but i will never agree. If this idea doesn't work then i will have more experience for a next idea. I will always have this idea and wondering about whether it will or won't work won't do anything for me. So I'm going to see it through and i'll see if your right or wrong about it. (thanks to that brain crack video i found on Cambrian house somewhere!)

> thanks

You are welcome!

> making it a members only vote

That's a much better approach, if one has to fork a few bucks to be a member, then another bunch once in a while to stay. It is nothing for a die-hard fan, can even be made somewhat psychologically mandatory for them, and is a powerful deterrent against polluters

> You say its doomed but i will never agree. If this idea doesn't work then i will have more experience for a next idea

Hey, I wrote that the idea, as presented here and now, is doomed. I never thought nor wrote that you are, or that any other idea of yours will be :-)

In fact the "voting if reserved to members" and "membership is not free" approach is much, much better. To the point of probably being usable, in my opinion.

> I'm going to see it through and i'll see if your right or wrong about it. (thanks to that brain crack video i found on Cambrian house somewhere!)

http://www.cambrianh...ral-discussion/2348/

Bring the club owners into the equation. They need to book the entertainment, and they have other interests at stake (like matching to their format perhaps). Maybe the club owners could help verify the "voting", based on who has been playing there and who and how many are comming out each night.

I like the idea.

Hey all, in the independent filmscene this idea is just got real, "brave new theaters" does this. More and more independent filmmakers are creating tools on their site to make it fans easier to organise a theatrical screening. Mullac14, this can realy be inspiring:

for a concrete exemple:
http://foureyedmonst.../set-up-a-screening/
the site of:
http://bravenewtheaters.com:80/

Thats a great idea summertime. once the initial site is up and running its a great thing to think about. Thanks very much for your comment

Thank you for your kind words solstikan, The information you've provided is more than useful!

2 days to go now until i turn Please Play Here into an actual business!

mullac14, I like the originality of this. I'm not sure it would be conveying new information to a band. If it did, and they found they had a surprisingly big fan base in City X, then maybe you'd trigger a tour there.

The pre-payment system might find most people being unhappy (or if its pre-commitment not pre-pay then most people bailing). My criteria for attending a concert is location and time. All convenience factors. If its inconvenient, generally I can't make it.

I might commit $40 to see WEEN in Calgary again, but they say they're coming but on a bad date for me, how do we resolve that?

If this idea bails on the $ entirely and is just about collecting votes... then its a gameable site which PROBABLY won't convey any new info to anything other than the very smallest band.

Can anyone in a band chime in on whether such votes for please-play-here (when not backed up with some sort of $ commitment) would sway your behavior?

Perhaps if it was a site for documenting fans free promotion of a band... you know like if i was crazy enough to run around town putting up posters for WEEN even though they weren't going to play in Calgary. WEEN could see that documented by photos, take a commitment from me to do some marketing work for them in advance of their Calgary appearance... and assume they'll get a good turn out in Calgary. I'd be taking on work that their own promoter (or who ever is hosting the performance) would normally do. But maybe that's who I'd need to brown-nose anyway... the promoter could decide to take the band thru Calgary 'cause he'd know he could phone-it-in for that city's promotional efforts.

solstikan, I thought I was in the Brave-New-Films loop... apparently not. That is pretty neat.

ONE QUALM

If I used this and then the band didn't come to my town, I'd be pretty pissed. I think it should be more like a venue database or perhaps just a passive way to give bands information.

It's just a big list of local venues and the bands planning to play there. And, to access the information, the user must enter his/her top 10 favorite bands.

This way you gather information to sell/give to bands (concentrations of their fan base) and you don't aggravate fans by making them vote and having their favorite bands potentially ignore their requests.

wow a lot of comments!

I've read everything people have written and come up with what i believe is an ultimate idea!

ok so here goes,

original idea: Bands come onto PPH that are planning a tour, we then ask the fans whether they want the band to play in their local town/city. We charge them straight away for asking us to ask the fans to choose where they should go. Fans choose by venue that is closest to them.

However: Limits the number of bands on PPH fans can only
choose local town/city they want the band to visit.

So Now: Bands come to us and say they want to tour/ play random venues (even secret gigs) Fans vote (like a sort of poll) where they want the band to play, (band chooses initial list of venues that they are thinking about going to (like major cities in the country ect.)) We charge the band a flat rate to enter their band into PPH.*

AND: Fans can come onto PPH (as signed up members) They list their favourite bands and this list is submitted to us and we use the stats to sell them to the record that may be interested in this knowledge OR (note the big OR for a reason that its unlikely) we ourselves can arrange a gig at that venue (way pay the artist and we keep the prohits) this will gain huge publicity.

For Smaller Bands: They sign-up and are able to view local venues in their area, They ask their fans to choose where they should go. We only charge the smaller bands asking to do this a minimal fee. (fee there is to stop abuse to the system and pretending that big bands are wanting to play in little venues)

Extras: Each band will have access to a little kit for advertising to their fans on myspace ect. that they want them to choose where they should go. Fans have the same thing so they can influence their friends to vote.

* This is the most likely thing i will be changing, please submit ideas about this and if its a good one then you will be receiving royalty points or some cash.

More will be added soon, i've started writing up an actual business plan that will be uploaded as soon as possible.

Be warned i need alot of help to do this! Heres some of the initial things i need to get my head around.

1. Money - funding
2. New name ( Please Play Here isn't exactly catchy!)
3. Website (i say that like it sounds easy...)
4. much muhc more :)

already got an awesome graphics artist that will be adding colour to the website! up.

once again thanks to everybody who's commented, you've probably seen your input in a similar form on the new plan! to that i thank you and i'll credit you when the business is started! Just remind me!

yey callum!!!!
how exciting. Last night i saw that Crowdfish thing had a better "average score" than you, and i didnt know which they went on, but woooo now! God, how unprofessional do I sound?
Funding: Concept Investments :P
Names:....hmmm I'll have a think...weRock? ouiRock...lol...Ill think some more!
You know I'll help in any way humane possible :P

Great finish this week, mullac14!! *hat tip* Can't wait to see this get started =D

thank you all very much for your comments :)

i've created this into a business

http://www.cambrianh...siness/view/unknown/

and also i've made a HUGE post on the forum so its easy to crowsource the idea.

http://www.cambrianh...ing/2422/#post-18969

Hi callam,

i know you are looking at the big ticket bands and a national or even global website,
i can see by the comments that what seems like a simple idea at first can turn out to be very complex when lare amounts of money are involved.
i like the idea,and see it as a usefull tool that could be used on a local level to cater for the hundred of small bands in a particular local area.

i live in a very rural area, therefore i get to see the same bands quite often in different watering holes.
it would be nice to look at a website on a friday or saturday nite and see at a moments notice who is playing where localy.
that would help me decide which pub or place i wanted to visit or to avoid seeing the same band again.
even to follow there movements and booking if i did like them.
i know you said looking for funding is going to be a concern,so i would try getting funding through the local establishments and bands that relate to your area,and that frequent those venues .
if you grow it from there you should be able to get enough funding through all your new contacts in the business on a local level and then move on out to the big time.as you refine the idea to suit that market.

turning your idea on its head a bit,
if it would be the venue owners asking bands "please play here"to sell more beer ! .
and the fans voting for free which band they would like to see play, directed at the venue owner.who willknow if he is being scamed by a bot or not as he is local and lives in the real world.
the bands will soon get to know where there fans are how much they are loved when they are paid by the venue owner to go there.

who makes the money ? the band and the venue owner

how do you make the money? i can think of several different ways !

all the best jason.

argh didn't see that you commented on here! I private messaged you back because that was the first copy of this message i saw i'll just copy my responce now so everyone can read.

"Hello propertygeek,

thanks very much for the message. You raise some valid and interesting points. With this idea pretty much changing daily at the moment. I have seen that maybe the venues section is to play a much bigger part in this than i initially thought.

Your idea of being able to search local clubs and venues is an immense idea. I'm having trouble at the moment trying to find something that will keep members coming back to PPH. (i don't want members to have profile pages like myspace (yet!) as i want it to be about the music and not the comments/ page views/ and friends.) This is a very valid point that could entice the members back onto the site.

as for making money, I've scrapped the "pay to register" idea and i have other ways to make the money.

As for funding the idea, I will try anything to be honest! thanks for the advice. "

once again cheers for the comment

I think that this idea could have interesting implications in the music industry. I also think it could be interesting for gauging demand for services in an area. I bet Webvan (delivered groceries ordered online) would have like to find out where to target. So would Kozmo (delivered snacks and movies... well porn) have liked to know.

Another interesting application would be the locating of neighborhoods most likely to order ultra-high speed fiber to the home.

As for a name, I bought Crowdio.com and Localius.com and I am not so likely to use them.

Check out Eventful Demand.

http://eventful.com/demand

Over 5 million users. Tens of thousands of artists are using it. Fans tell the artists what cities to perform in; artists use it to ask fans where in the world they should perform.

Hugely succesful, very viral, been up and running for a couple years already!

It's also been used by most of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign organizations, both Dem and Repub, to find where the candidates should go to meet supporters in person at rallies and speeches.

It's been featured on CNN numerous times, and written up in Billboard magazine, WIRED, and other places.

Just discovered this idea and still digesting all the posts. I'm interested to see how this either differs from or improves upon eventful.com.

Re: vote fraud:
What about voting by phone like American Idol? Everyone has a phone. One call = one vote. People can call us much as they want but only the first vote counts. Sure, someone could use a cell phone, a landline home phone, a fax line, an office line and their neighbor's brother's girlfriend's phone but that's still only 5 enthusiastic votes and not 10,000 spammy votes. And that could be pared down to a single vote by requiring a numeric code to identify the user's account.