Ok so we bang on and on about how great Australia’s live music scene is. Especially if you’re a Melbourne based music fan, the opportunities to catch your new favourite band in are pretty much endless.
The tricky part of seeing live music in Melbroune isn’t so much getting there or know what venues host live gigs, but just simply choosing which of the multitude of happening shows you should go to.
This is where GoHear, a new Melbourne based live music app comes in: The crew at GoHear found that the current live music guides were missing a crucial ingredient to help people make quick and easy decisions: the music. At the same time, Melbourne has hundreds of amazing up-and-coming musicians and bands who struggle to build their audience as quickly as they deserve.
Meeting these two problems with one simple gig guide app, the team have solved both the user’s and the musician’s problem. Their main goals are to get more people to gigs and to give local bands that little extra push. To find out more about just how the app came about and what its future looks like we caught up with GoHear co-creator Jef Van Acoleyen.
At the moment GoHear is only focussed on Melbourne, for more info visit www.gohear.com.au or the GoHear Facebook page.
What GoHear Actually Is
The GoHear app is a gig guide that doubles as a playlist, making it really easy to find bands or artists you know you’ll like before going to their gig. That way, we’re hoping people will discover more of the amazing grassroots artists in Melbourne that haven’t made a name for themselves yet.
We’re are creating a level playing field (pun totally intended) because the music speaks for itself. Also, on our map, you can see what gigs are on around you.
The People Behind GoHear
We have a four person team and we all have very different professional backgrounds, which brings quite different perspectives to GoHear:
Erik is a social worker who is passionate about working with refugees and young people. He currently works as a youth worker in the Melbourne community. Out of the four of us, he’s definitely the keenest live music fan and he moved to Collingwood for that reason. He is amazed by the musical talent in Melbourne and always highlights the importance of live music for any community.
Dan is a developer who used to work on major corporations’ tech infrastructures overseas and who’s now working on way cooler projects for a small branding agency in Melbourne. He initially made the move from Perth to work with us on GoHear so he was our first convert. We offered him a couch in return.
Kevin has mostly worked in foreign aid and social enterprise in Asia and South America. He’s also sold phones for Telstra and worked for a charity in Melbourne, so he’s done it all. He is the one who took us to his favourite band (the Kill Devil Hills) the night he made an off-the-cuff remark that turned into the idea for GoHear.
And I (Jef) am an ex-banker who changed his ways and moved into the branding and marketing space about five years ago. I love just walking into random gigs, hoping to be surprised by a band I’ve never heard before.
None of us had ever done anything like this before. Dan had never even made an app before. He had to figure it out as he went. The rest of us were more of a cheer squad, or backseat drivers, depending on who you ask.
How The Idea Came About
Once upon a time, Kevin, Erik and Jef used to be housemates. After we’d all gone our separate ways, Kevin invited us to go watch the Kill Devil Hills at the Curtin Hotel.
Beforehand he was venting his frustration with current gig guides: “I love going to gigs, but it always takes me hours alternating between a gig guide and Youtube or Soundcloud in my browser to find out which band I want to go and see. Why don’t they just give you the music along with the gig info?” This was our “there must be a better way” moment. Kevin didn’t mess around and registered our company name the next day.
I think we came up with the idea in April 2015, but it turns out that it’s surprisingly difficult to create something simple.
Biggest Lessons Learnt While Making This App
Probably learning to let go of some control and set the app free: we could have worked on it for another year to further polish it or add features, but we decided it was better to get feedback from users as soon as possible. Putting something you created from scratch out to the public is always a bit daunting.
Music Fans The App Creators Envisioned
We think there are broadly two groups of music fans in terms of how often they go to see live music.
[include_post id=”425680″]The first group, those who go most often, already know the music scene quite well but might be a bit settled on their favourite bands and venues. We think the app could be a really helpful tool in their information gathering process but also help break routines and check out new stuff.
We think GoHear will be especially good for the second group of music fans: those that really enjoy live music but who find it too difficult or time consuming finding bands or gigs they like. Some of our team is part of that group. So we believe that by making it really easy to find a gig they’ll enjoy, they’ll head to gigs more often, which would be a win for both artists and venues. And obviously for the punters themselves.
Given that Melbourne is quite an international city we also see a third group: backpackers and people who moved from overseas who may struggle to navigate the the Melbourne music landscape. Everyone loves exploring and discovering when they travel and we want to give them a way to experience parts of Melbourne they otherwise might have missed.
What Makes GoHear Different From other Gig List Apps
GoHear provides the unique ability to sample upcoming music from a playlist so it is easier for users to decide where they’ll spend their time. The fact that users can see the different gigs on a map is a feature we think sets us apart as well.
Our overall philosophy is that we want to make it simple and enjoyable for music fans to discover music they wouldn’t otherwise get exposed to, an approach which we think will really help local artists and venues, who may be underrepresented or difficult to find, attract more people to their gigs.
And there’s much more coming that we believe will make GoHear an even better app for music fans and artists.
Plans For The Rest Of 2016
We are planning to introduce a host of great new features into the app that we think will further improve the user experience and make it even easier for people to find their way to gigs. We are not going to give away everything quite yet, but we can reveal that ticketing and linking the app with Facebook will be some of them. Stay tuned!
At the moment GoHear is only focussed on Melbourne, for more info visit www.gohear.com.au or the GoHear Facebook page.
