I like to say that there are two things that motivate customers: fear and greed.

Songkick, a web service founded in 2007, addresses a very simple and common fear: not knowing when one of your favorite bands comes to town.

I signed up for the service a few weeks ago and I love it. It has a very slick and simple UI/UX. You simply “track” your favorite bands and the site builds your own personal calendar of events. It then makes recommendations for similar acts that you should track. You can also import your favorite artists from Pandora, Last.fm and iTunes. One thing I’d like to see them add soon is a second calendar that’s full of recommendations that you haven’t yet chosen to track. That would be great for nights when you just want to see some live music but one of your favorites isn’t performing.

Once you’ve setup your profile and created your own calendar, the system will send you an email when a show from one of your favorite bands gets scheduled in your area (I've already received a few of these emails and it's pretty exciting when you see one in your inbox).

In short, Songkick has executed very well on an awesome idea. If you like live music, you should definitely take a few minutes to sign up.