gig listing title/subject too long due to duplicate info

[smchughuk]

I'm not even sure if this is a developer question or not but I am not
really sure why Songkick supplies RSS info in the way it does.

But interpreting this data - or even reading it on the iPhone Calendar
app - is made quite cumbersome, as half the data on a small screen is
often pushed out by the subject.

Example:
The gig subject:
Thin Lizzy at Barrowland Ballroom

The venue:
Barrowland Ballroom, 244 Gallowgate, G4 0TT, Glasgow, UK

I don't see why the venue name is duplicated - and it's all in one
field, so it's impossible to filter out. (to be honest, the address,
city and postcode could go as well, but the dupe venue is the greatest
space-killer)
Well, maybe not impossible, I've just installed the Songkick app and
it is great, it has metro area feeds and the like as well, so much
more usable than the website. And separate fields! If I could embed
this on my website...

So anyway, I guess I'm flagging this as a feature request or whatever,
unless anyone knows if a way to eliminate the unnecessary data.

Stuart

[Mario Menti]

Hi Stuart,

this is only really partially a Songkick API question, and more related to how the RSS feeds are generated.

- from our previous correspondence I think you're just using the user feeds, so I have today added a title_only parameter to the user feed handler, which will generate a user feed that contains title only, so won't duplicate content (e.g.: http://acousti.co/feeds/user/jockrock?title_only=1)

- more generally speaking (and this actually is a question for the Songkick API folks), when I create the feeds, by default the title is the value of event["displayName"], while the description is a combination of event["venue"]["displayName"] and event["location"]["city"]. If it's true that the venue name (i.e. event["venue"]["displayName"]) is *always* also present in event["displayName"], then I could just remove that part from the description element of the feed. Perhaps Sabrina or someone else from the API team could confirm?

Cheers,
Mario.

[Sabrina Leandro]

Hi Stuart, Mario,

> - more generally speaking (and this actually is a question for the Songkick API folks), when I create the feeds, by default the title is the value of event["displayName"], while the description is a combination of event["venue"]["displayName"] and event["location"]["city"]. If it's true that the venue name (i.e. event["venue"]["displayName"]) is *always* also present in event["displayName"], then I could just remove that part from the description element of the feed. Perhaps Sabrina or someone else from the API team could confirm?

For concerts, the title will always contain the venue name. For
festivals, the title is always FestivalName + Year (Glastonbury 2012),
so you might want to add the venue name if we know about it.

Hope that helps!

--
Sabrina Leandro
http://www.songkick.com/users/saleandro

[Mario Menti]

On 20 Jan 2012, at 14:32, Sabrina Leandro wrote:

> Hi Stuart, Mario,
>
>> - more generally speaking (and this actually is a question for the Songkick API folks), when I create the feeds, by default the title is the value of event["displayName"], while the description is a combination of event["venue"]["displayName"] and event["location"]["city"]. If it's true that the venue name (i.e. event["venue"]["displayName"]) is *always* also present in event["displayName"], then I could just remove that part from the description element of the feed. Perhaps Sabrina or someone else from the API team could confirm?
>
> For concerts, the title will always contain the venue name. For
> festivals, the title is always FestivalName + Year (Glastonbury 2012),
> so you might want to add the venue name if we know about it.
>
> Hope that helps!

Thanks Sabrina, I've just updated all the the RSS feed handlers to only include the venue name in the description if the event type is "Festival".

Stuart - this should mean you won't even need that title_only flag anymore as the duplicate venue info is now gone from the feeds, unless you also want to hide the city of the event.

Cheers,
Mario.

[Stuart Mchugh]

Hi Mario
thanks for your work on this which has streamlined the process of
getting info for my feed. Which makes this email all the more
irritating for me to type!
I've realised that the Jockrock feed is now pretty useless for my
purposes - not anything to do with your feeds, but in fact due to the
way that Songkick has managed to kill a lot of the features in their
grand redesign. The problem, to be precise, is that the Jockrock user
used to follow several other users (edinburghgigs, glasgowgigs etc)
which were based on metro areas. Now, these will only supply info for
TRACKED ARTISTS in those areas.
So, 2 options - I can either login as Jockrock and click 'I'm going'
to every show in each area (of course, I don't even get emails any
more which at least would let me click on a link).
Or, I could track every artist for every location in Scotland
(including, er, those that haven't played their first shows yet).

So as you can see, the jockrock feed is a bit of a dead duck, through
no-one's fault and certainly not yours.

(I have no idea who much work it is to set up a feed in the way you
did with the jockrock one, I'd imagined that here was one for
glasgowgigs at some point but maybe not, it's blank anyway so perhaps
I imagined that). I could really do with an interface on my app like
that on the Songkick app, but unfortunately the one that Conduit
generates isn't anywhere near as sophisticated (understandably).

Anyway, thought I should check in with you after your work on this -
any bright ideas appreciated as ever!
Cheers

Stuart

po box 13516 linlithgow eh49 6wb ... t: 01506 840063 ... e: edi...@isthismusic.com

[Mario Menti]

Couldn't you just use the metro area feeds, e.g. http://acousti.co/feeds/metro_area/glasgow (see "Location (metro area) calendar" at http://acousti.co/songkick for more details). Not sure how many metro areas there are in Scotland, but may be doable that way?

Mario.