In the short span of days since my last post about Last.fm’s concert notification functionality, there have been further developments (either that or I was terribly unobservant last time!). Now, for certain listings, there’s a little icon beside the date of the concert which indicates whether it’s possible to purchase a ticket for the event via a Last.fm affiliate. This is the last link in the chain - users can be notified of a gig and purchase tickets relatively seamlessly without having to Google for a ticket agency. I say relatively seamlessly because the purchasing process isn’t integrated directly into the page (a little Ajax magic wouldn’t have gone amiss here), rather the user has to select a link on the concert details page which pops open another window for the ticket vendor’s website - in the case of the Keane link I clicked, I was taken to a ‘See’ page that listed all of Keane’s concerts rather than the exact one that I’d chosen via Last.fm. Also, at the top left of the See page is a ‘return to last.fm’ box, but this returned me to my dashboard page, not the event page I’d departed from. Not a big deal, but not quite 100% flow either. I’d expect that such details will be sorted out in time though. Also, at this early stage, there aren’t many listings for which tickets are available. Again, as Last.fm acquires partners, this is bound to improve.

A nice detail I’ve just noted is that events on the Event Recommendation page are subtly colour-coded into five categories: ‘gig you’re attending’, ‘recommended gig’, ‘festival you’re attending’, ‘recommended festival’ and ‘friends’ event’. Under a friend’s event, the friend is named along with the number of other Last.fm-registered attendees (the event page shows who these people are). They’ve also added iCal (Apple’s built-in calendar application) notification friends’ and recommended events, alongside the aforementioned RSS feeds. (One more reason for me, one day, to migrate from Entourage.) Now if they could just supply a recording of the gig as a memento and a wirelessly-conveyed hangover cure, I think we’d all be very happy…

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