How do you find the next concert you’d like to attend? Maybe you follow your favourite artists and check their tour dates. Perhaps you’re a regular in your local music club. Or you’re checking what music blogs are recommending or using platforms like Bandsintown.
However, finding interesting gigs is challenging. It’s a fragmented experience, often putting ticket sales front and centre while the discovery part takes a backseat.
With their sleek web application sooon.live, Sebastian Pietsch and Dan Nessler try to flip the script. A platform, currently in early access, that focuses on music first while promoting a show. On their website, interested people can gain access to the beta environment.
Negative White met the founders at the m4music festival to talk about their venture.
Elevator pitch: What’s „sooon“?
Dan Nessler: „Sooon“ is a new concert and festival discovery platform with the primary goal of sustainably supporting the small and midsized live music culture in Switzerland.
Sounds like another concert calendar—that’s not particularly exciting. What differentiates „sooon“ from existing offers?
Dan Nessler: Sebastian and I are both passionate concert and festival visitors. We always struggled with the fact that there’s no really excellent concert calendar in Switzerland. Yes, there are international players like Songkick or Bandsintown and regional platforms. However, the main issue with these platforms is that you just get a long list of names you don’t know. What’s missing is the crucial part: the music.
„Sooon“is built on the idea we coined ‚tune-scrolling‘. You intuitively scroll through a feed of shows and festival gigs, and the music takes the spotlight.
It’s hard to describe the „sooon“ experience adequately. The closest analogy might be TikTok or Instagram Reels. Here’s a short screen recording:
The interface screams personalisation. Is that something you’re thinking about?
Sebastian Pietsch: It’s definitely a topic for us. We’re currently in a closed beta release, but we hope to have a proper go-live by the end of 2025. Personalisation requires a lot of technological development, and we also have to consider carefully how it should actually work.
Switzerland is a small but fragmented country. It’s hard to bring someone from Zurich to Bern for a concert. How do you address this challenge?
Dan Nessler: Our focus is to make music and artists discoverable. One might say there’s the Spotify algorithm to accomplish this. We believe that if your local town is recommending what’s happening around you, it’s far more impactful and can help the local scene. But sure, you can’t convince everybody to travel to a concert. There are different target audiences, and we definitely don’t address them all on the same level.
Are there any plans to export your application to other countries?
Sebastian Pietsch: It’s not planned yet, but we certainly can imagine that the technology we’re building would be reasonably easy to use in other European countries at a later stage. But right now, we want to focus on Switzerland and a comprehensive product in all regions.
Can you explain the business model?
Dan Nessler: We’re not entirely set on it yet. „Sooon“ is built and maintained by a non-profit association. We’re not looking to generate profit but to give back to the live music culture. As a vision, we hope to create a foundation that can distribute potential profits back to smaller and medium-sized clubs and artists.
We’re currently exploring different revenue streams, such as white-labelling our application to festivals or sponsoring partners. We’re also considering promotional content.
What about traditional advertising?
Dan Nessler: No, we definitely don’t want some weird ad for washing machines in our feed. We’re concerned with data privacy and want to avoid becoming a data hoarder at all costs. But maybe once we have a proper mobile app, there’s the option to build a premium subscription with additional features.
Anyway, that’s far into the future. We’re currently looking for funding. Right now, we’re working in our spare time.
