Seeing live music is, in a way, much like habitually doing hard drugs. You get really excited, then sweaty and exhausted and are filled with euphoria for a night. Then you wake up the next morning feeling slightly hungover and wondering where all of your money went (the answer: shady ticket dealers like Stubhub, who do not by any means have the plug). Tickets keep getting more and more expensive, and unless the only acts you want to see are obscure enough to be playing $10 bar shows or free open mics, you’re going to end up missing shows in the interest of saving your money for overpriced Town and Country lunches or hard drugs, if that’s your thing (never do hard drugs).
But a few weeks ago, a solution reared its beautiful head and proceeded to offer to drench us in affordable sonic wetness. This noble savior is a startup company called Jukely, and it offers a revolutionary new method of live music attendance. For the relatively reasonable price of $25 a month, Jukely will get you tickets to around 500 different shows in the same month. This subscription based model allows music connoisseurs, ravers and concert enthusiasts to go to as many events as they can make it out to, and even encourages them to go to more shows to get their money’s worth out of that month. It also boasts social features that will link you up with friends or mutual friends in your social network based on attendance and music taste so you won’t have to go to anything alone if you lack the inner strength of the lone wolf.
The company started business as a beta test in New York City and Los Angeles but just this month made the excellent decision to add San Francisco as its third city. Its roster of past events includes big names like Yung Lean, RL Grime, Tyler the Creator and Waka Flocka Flame, among many others. The upcoming San Francisco shows provided boast a lineup of Salva, Gorgon City, Deafheaven and Les Sins, along with a massive undercard of events spanning multiple genres, locations and dates – there are an average of ten to twenty different shows per day. Jukely prides itself on having something for everyone, from the gluten-free Win Butler worshipper to the wide-eyed Kandi kid.
However, the service does have a catch – there are only limited amounts of tickets available for each show. That means that buying your monthly subscription doesn’t guarantee you tickets to that one show that you really wanted to see. This might be disappointing to some who only want to go to a select few shows (normally with these types of people, only the most popular ones). But this is just a byproduct of the affordable price, and Jukely hopes that it can encourage users to branch out instead and find shows to go to that they normally wouldn’t, or even artists they’ve never heard of before.
But if the deal still sounds too good to be true to you, then it gets even better once you visit the Jukely website and find out that the first 7 days are free, and you can cancel right after that if you want. So go ahead, indulge yourself in a free concert – it’s on them. But if you don’t want to just take advantage of their generosity and actually contribute to their business, which can almost be seen as charitable to music lovers whose pockets aren’t overflowing with cash, then go ahead and drop the $25 and go to at least one more show and you’ll have already saved yourself money.