Bandsintown is a powerful platform for live music artists and promoters. Here's how it compares to a community event directory — and why the two work well together.
| Events In Plain Sight | Bandsintown | |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Community-wide event discovery | Live music artist and promoter platform |
| Domain | Your own branded subdomain | Hosted on bandsintown.com |
| Cost to Participate | Free, always | Free for fans; paid tiers for artists and promoters |
| Event Creation | Any registered user, no cost | Bands and promoters only |
| Event Types | Any community, any type | Live music performances only |
| Crowdsourced | Yes, community submissions | No, artists and promoters only |
| Best For | Helping people find events across a community | Connecting fans with artists and live shows |
Bandsintown was built for the live music industry. It serves artists who want to announce tour dates, promoters who want to reach concert-goers, and fans who want to track their favourite artists on the road. It does this job extremely well — and it is purpose-built to stay in that lane.
Events In Plain Sight is not focused on any single type of event. A community can be built around roller derby, trail running, craft beer, comic books, tabletop gaming, live music, or anything else. The platform is designed to work for any interest area, not just performances.
If you are in the live music world, Bandsintown's specialization is a genuine strength — it speaks directly to your audience, integrates with the tools your industry uses, and markets to people who already follow concerts and shows. If you are running a community that spans multiple event types or interests beyond live music, a general-purpose event directory is a better fit.
On Bandsintown, events are created by bands and promoters. That is the model — the people with a show to promote are the ones who add it. Fans can track artists and receive notifications, but they cannot add events themselves. The directory reflects exactly what artists and promoters put into it.
Events In Plain Sight was built around crowd-sourced event submissions from the start. Any registered user can add an event at no cost. The community owner can add events, but so can venue operators, local fans, journalists, or anyone else who knows about something worth listing. This means a community can capture events that no single organizer would ever think to add themselves.
A directory limited to what artists and promoters add will always reflect the official picture. A crowd-sourced directory can grow organically as community members contribute — catching the small local shows, the pop-up events, and the things that fall through the cracks of formal promotion.
Bandsintown wants concert-goers to come to Bandsintown. That is how the platform works — fans follow artists on the Bandsintown app and website, and the platform grows its own audience in the process. When a fan discovers your show through Bandsintown, they are building a habit on Bandsintown's platform, not yours.
Each Events In Plain Sight community gets its own configurable subdomain. Community members visit your branded address to browse events. Traffic flows to your community, not to a shared platform. Over time, that builds a destination people associate with your community specifically.
The trade-off is real: Bandsintown brings an existing audience of music fans who are already on the platform. That reach has genuine value, especially for touring artists trying to find new listeners. But that audience belongs to Bandsintown, not to your community. Building your own community's presence means building something that benefits the community long-term.
The most practical way to think about Events In Plain Sight for bands and promoters is as another promotion channel — one that reaches people in the local community who may not be following you on Bandsintown yet.
If your community already has an Events In Plain Sight listing for your area or genre, adding your show takes minutes. For the event URL, use your Bandsintown Smart Link. Community members discover your show through the local event directory, click through to your Smart Link, and land on Bandsintown where they can find tickets and follow you for future dates. You get broader local reach without any extra infrastructure.
Events In Plain Sight does not compete with Bandsintown's core toolset for artists and promoters. It extends your reach into community discovery — the people who find events by browsing what's happening locally rather than by tracking specific artists.
Bandsintown and Events In Plain Sight are built for different jobs. Bandsintown is a live music platform that connects artists and promoters with fans — it is a powerful, industry-specific tool with its own established audience. Events In Plain Sight is a community event directory that surfaces what's happening across any community, crowd-sourced from the community itself, regardless of what promotion tools an organizer uses.
For bands and promoters, the two work well together. Use Bandsintown to manage your artist presence, reach your existing fan base, and coordinate with promoters. Then add your shows to Events In Plain Sight communities with your Bandsintown Smart Link as the event URL — and pick up the local discovery audience that Bandsintown alone won't reach.
If there isn't already an Events In Plain Sight community for your local scene or genre, you can start one yourself.