Apple Music wants to help you find that next Taylor Swift concert.
Apple is rolling out a couple of new ideas it calls, “concert discovery features” using Apple Music and Apple Maps to help you find — you guessed it — your next concert. Apple Maps is getting a feature called Apple Music Guides and Apple Music is getting a feature called Set Lists. Both are available now.
Apple Music Guides is for when you know you want to see a live show but don’t care who you’re going to see. These guides highlight over 40 different music venues in over 10 different cities and are curated by Apple Music editors. Just pop open the Apple Maps app and you can explore everything — or, at least a lot of the things — cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Nashville, Vienna, Tokyo and more have to offer.
However, the coolest part of these guides is how the Maps app integrates with Shazam’s concert discovery module powered by Bandsintown. This integration allows you to see a venue's upcoming shows list through Apple Maps.
How to check out concert venues using Apple Music Guides
Here’s how it works. If you go to Apple Music Guides and click on the guide for a city, you get a list of venues. Click on one of the venues, and it will take you to the familiar Apple Maps page where you see icons such as “Directions,” “Call,” etc. For supported venues, you’ll now also see an icon that says “Tickets.” Click the Tickets icon and it will take you to a Shazam page showing upcoming concerts for the venue.
Unfortunately, there is still a bit left to be desired with this integration. While you can see what’s coming and add a concert’s details to your calendar, you can’t actually buy tickets. Or at least, that was the case when I tested the feature for Nashville’s American Legion Post 82. But the issue is with the Shazam page — not Apple Maps. Hopefully, Shazam boosts the functionality of its concert discovery features soon.
Set Lists will tell you your favorite artist is playing next
With Set Lists, Apple Music is finally getting one of my favorite Spotify features, but with a twist. This feature highlights major tours, similar to the Live events section you’ll see on a Spotify artist page. But it goes beyond that as well. With Set Lists, Apple Music users can listen to the set list for the tour and learn more about the production. And of course, you can see if the artist is coming to your area by clicking Browse upcoming shows.
While both apps are getting new features, you don’t need to have both in order to use one or the other. So if you’re a Spotify user you can still access Apple Music Guides through the Apple Maps app. And if you’re a Google Maps fan, you can still use Apple Music Set Lists to see when major artists are coming to a venue near you.
If you don’t have the Apple Maps app, you can also take a look at the Apple Music Guides site on a web browser to check out the new feature.
