For live music aficionados, Jukely may be a dream come true. The concert discovery app offers tickets to unlimited concerts for just $25 per month in select areas as part of Jukely Unlimited. And thanks to an addition of $8 million in funding for future expansion, Jukely may be coming to your town.
Jukely provides the link between frequent concertgoers and upcoming live music shows, but it’s not just a list of upcoming performances. The app figures out your musical tastes via an algorithm, suggests shows for you to check out and links you up with other music lovers. The algorithm uses data from users’ accounts from Facebook, Soundcloud, Spotify, Last.fm, Hype Machine and Rdio to make recommendations of upcoming shows.
Jukely Unlimited’s focus is definitely on rising bands. The majority of the tickets are for up-and-coming (and more affordable) acts, though the website does boast some prominent performers including Skrillex, Questlove, and Kiesza. While there is technically no limit, most subscribers go to two to three shows on average per month, according to Jukely (via TechCrunch). The service says 65 percent of users go to see artists they haven’t heard of before. In addition to the $25 option, there’s an option for two users together at $45/month.
While the beta version of the startup launched last summer solely as a concert recommendation app, Jukely Unlimited came online in November. Unlimited launched in New York City and has since expanded to 9 other cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, Chicago, Miami, Toronto, Seattle, Philadelphia and Denver.
“The service has proved to generate additional revenue and is clearly expanding the market for the live music industry by getting music lovers to attend shows they normally wouldn’t go to see,” Jukely co-founder Bora Celik said to TechCrunch.
With the new funding, the concert discovery app and ticketing platform plans to expand to more than 20 cities in both the U.S. and Europe. Investment company Northzone led the latest funding round with venture capitalist group 14W’s Alex Zubillaga (formerly of Warner Music) along with Larry Marcus, Hany Nada, Lyor Cohen (also formerly of Warner), Maiden Lane and GroupMe founders Steve Martocci and Jared Hecht.
The live music market is a thriving one, but often overlooks up-and-coming artists performing in 50 — or even 250 — person rooms. Jukely hopes to change that by getting music lovers to come out to more shows without dipping too far into their wallets. It has the significant financial backing, but can it convince fans to pay $25 per month? The jury’s out, but Jukely hopes that it can find those live music die-hard fans willing to lay down a monthly fee to get out and experience new music.
