Concert recommender Songkick takes $4.6M

Songkick, a site that recommends concerts in your local area based on your preferred artists, has snagged $4.65 million of an anticipated $7.17 million first round of funding, reports VentureWire. The company also aggregates ticket information from 16 sites like StubHub, Ticketweb and Ticketmaster, allowing for one-click purchase.

When VentureBeat last covered the London company in March, we detailed some of its other cool features, including the ability to generate a concert schedule from your personal music library and to compare the popularity of your favorite bands based on various metrics. Now, it also gives you the option to receive alerts when designated artists come to town, and to put a personalized widget showing the tours you’re tracking on your online profile or personal site (heads up, music bloggers). For more on these features and its advertising network Bandsense, see our past coverage here.

Several major competitors are already hot on Songkick’s heals. Online music store PassAlong has launched its own smart concert listing widget, OnTour, also drawing from users’ digital libraries and linking them to tickets, maps to nearby venues and artists’ online discographies. Established music recommendation service iLike has added a “My Concerts” wishlist feature matching upcoming shows to your iTune playlists, and site Bandsintown offers RSS and iCal feeds of concerts based on your favorite artists on iTunes and Last.fm. In this environment, Songkick will need to keep innovating in order to compete.

Songkick was originally backed by Y Combinator in 2007 and raised an estimated $1.1 million in angel funding from the likes of Saul Klein, founding partner of The Accelerator Group, and Jeff Clavier, managing partner of Softech VC, this past June. Index Ventures joined for the recent round.

No information on how long the round will remain open has been disclosed.