User’s Manual

This is a manual to describe some of iConcertCal’s features.

  • Set your city and state
  • Set a search radius
  • Add a missing show that you know about
  • Find out who else is playing at that show
  • Refine the list of artists that you monitor
  • Search for additional bands that are not in your iTunes Library
  • Exclude certain artists from your concert calendar
  • Make an iTunes playlist to refine your concert search
  • Find and pre-order upcoming CD releases
  • Share shows with your friends and view your friends’ shows
  • Export your calendar to iCal
  • Change which music library iConcertCal monitors
  • Useful keyboard/mouse shortcuts

Set your city and state

When iConcertCal first starts up it will try to automatically figure out what city and state you are in by checking your ip adress. But you can easily change your current city and state to search for shows in another town near you, or in a town where you plan to visit.

To change your city and state simply click on the current city and state text boxes, hit the delete key to clear the previous location, and type in your new location. iConcertCal will recognize either your full state name (“California”) or the 2-letter abbreviation for your state (“CA”). If you live in Canada, then you can enter your province in the state field.

For international users, use the state field to indicate your country. For example, if you are in London, you should enter
City: London
State: UK
of if you are in Paris:
City: Paris
State: France

Set a search radius

iConcertCal allows you to choose a search radius for finding shows in other cities near yours. Simply click on the “Radius” field and enter a number (in miles) that you are willing to travel to see a show.

Add a missing show that you know about

If you know of a show that is coming up, and you have that artist in your library, but the show is not appearing in your calendar, then please help everyone out by adding the show to the JamBase concert database. Simply click on the “Add A Show” link at the top right corner of your calendar, create a username and password, and then enter your concert info.

Find out who else is playing at that show

If you want to see who else is playing at a show you have in your list, simply hover your mouse over the show entry and a full list of all the other acts (that we could find) will be shown in a box above the calendar.

Refine the list of artists that you monitor

Do you have too many artists in your library? Are there bands there that you don’t want to know about in iConcertCal? If so, then we have three options for you that let you refine the list of artists that you search for. You can add additional artists, excludeartists, or create an iConcertCal playlist directly in iTunes that iConcertCal will monitor instead of your entire music library.

Search for additional bands that are not in your iTunes Library

If there are bands that you care about (and don’t have in your iTunes library) it is still easy to have iConcertCal find shows for those bands. Simply click on “Edit Preferences” in the upper right hand corner of the visualizer window and click on the General tab to enter the names of all the additional artists that you want to keep track of.

Exclude certain artists from your concert calendar

If there are bands that you have in your library but you don’t care about seeing their concerts, simply enter the names in the “Artists to Exclude” list under the General tab in the iConcertCal preferences.

Make an iTunes playlist to refine your concert search

Alternatively you can simply create a playlist and/or smart-playlist directly in iTunes. Name the playlist “iConcertCal”. Then add any artists to that playlist that you care about seeing live. Then restart your iTunes to get the new search list to take effect. From then on iConcertCal will ignore your normal iTunes library and only search for the bands in your iConcertCal playlist! To go back to normal mode, searching all artists in your library, simply delete the iConcertCal playlist and restart iTunes. Thanks to Thomas Stromberg for this great suggestion.
This feature could be used in a lot of creative ways that we are sure many of you will come up with on your own… but some basic ideas we had: You can setup a smart-playlist that only includes artists that you have rated with more than 3 stars, or you could make a smart-playlist that only includes bands that you have added new music for in the last 3 years, or you could make a smart-playlist that only includes bands you have listened to in the last 5 years,… you get the idea!

Find and pre-order upcoming CD releases

This is a new feature in v2.0. Select the CD Releases tab to see when your favorite bands are releasing albums. You can click on an artist for a direct link to pre-order the CD. For better or worse, we provide a very large amount of album releases including imports, extra tracks, limited editions, etc. Fortunately, we have provided an easy way of filtering through only the types of releases you are interested in. Select the Upcoming Releases tab in the iConcertCal preferences window. Here you can select the releases you are interested in.

Share shows with your friends and view your friends’ shows

This is a new feature in v2.0. Select the Sharing tab in the iConcertCal preference window. Here you can choose to share your entire concert calendar, or just your highlighted shows. Simply create a user name, and your shows can then be viewed by other people using iConcertCal. To see your friends’ shows, either type their name in the box and click the “Add Friend” button, or (if they live close by) click the button “Click to see a list of users in your area”, highlight the name you want to add, and click the “Add Friend” button. Now that you have added some friends, select the third tab in the iConcertCal visualizer called “Friend Shows”. The calendar should be populated with the shows your friends’ have shared.

Export your calendar to iCal

If you want to have your concert calendar automatically exported to an iCal formated file simply select that option in the Exporting tab of the iConcertCal preferences. You can also specify whether or not to export all your shows, or just shows that are highlighted. (Note: shows can be highlighted by right-clicking on them)

Mac OS X: The “Sync with iCal” option will generate a new colored calendar in iCal synced to the bands in iConcertCal. You will need to restart iCal for the calendar to be created. (Note: Any manual changes you make to the iConcertCal calendar within iCal will be overwritten whenever a new search is performed.)

Windows: You will need to choose a destination for the iCal file and from then on, every time that iConcertCal updates your concert listings it will also sync the new calendar with your iCal file.

Change which music library iConcertCal monitors

Do you keep all of your music on a central server instead of on your local computer? If you want iConcertCal to monitor a different library then click on “Edit Preferences” and browse for the filename and location to the library that you want to monitor.

Useful Keyboard/Mouse Shortcuts

Keyboard:

  • ⌘T: switches between iTunes and the calendar
  • Up/Down Arrow: scrolls the list of shows on the left side of your screen.
  • Left/Right Arrow: changes the currently displayed month in the calendar.

Mouse:

  • Scroll Wheel: scrolls through the list of shows on the left if the mouse is in that area or scrolls through the calendar if the mouse is in the calendar area.
  • Right Click: highlights a show.