When you set yourself the goal of becoming the Google of live music, you know you’ve taken on a big job. But since hooolp was founded in July 2009, it has grown to include a comprehensive database of concert details encompassing 25,000 gigs in Germany, with users able to choose between 25 genres of music, 35,000 bands and 16,500 concert locations.
Hooolp works both through its website and through a multi-platform app: At hooolp.com, users can search for gigs on the date they want in their locale, which is calculated through their IP address. Through either scanning music files stored on the device or by entering a band name, the Best Price Ticket app can find tour dates and compare ticket prices, ranking vendors by how cheap they are.
Within the next few weeks, a new app will be launched allowing users to search for gigs in the same way as on the website – by music genre, date or within an adjustable radius of their current location. This was tested out in September with an app for Berlin Music Week, and so the team behind it are hopeful it will work without a hitch from the start.
Hooolp’s CEO Manne Pokrandt, CFO Ulf Oestermann and CTO Denny Kruse all share a long time affinity for music as musicians, music producers and sound studio managers. Manne came up with the idea after a trip to Southeast Asia where he spotted a Thai service called bangkokgigguide.com (now seemingly defunct). Once back in Berlin, he had to defer to traditional search engines or browse through magazines in order to find the concerts he wanted, and found both options hopelessly inefficient and old-fashioned – so he decided to do something about it.
And with Berlin-based hooolp now well established in Germany, there are plans to extend the service worldwide: “Not every city may be able to show off 50-100 life music acts a day like Berlin, but we think that the service is as useful when the concert supply is abundant as when it is scarce. With live music being of interest across cultures, hooolp intends to expand its service – and spirit – into neighbouring countries in the foreseeable future.”