This year's top bands

The old year's almost over, time for a bit of summing up. So here are the top 10 artists (as of 1:40 PM CET) with the most setlists in the setlist.fm database - along with the great people that have been looking after their favourite artists and that are always keeping the statistics clean - you really rock:

1. R.E.M. - 789 setlists - bigdaycoming
2. U2 - 780 setlists - beau99, bigdaycoming
3. The Rolling Stones - 628 setlists - bbgun_301
4. Dir en grey - 397 setlists - beau99
5. They Might Be Giants - 214 setlists - beau99
6. Björk - 190 setlists - sicko
7. Alice Cooper - 188 setlists - michi
8. Red Hot Chili Peppers - 150 setlists - xxrobynx
9. Depeche Mode - 126 setlists - michi
10. Pearl Jam - 125 setlists - riazor

Thanks for all the effort and keep rockin in 2009!

New features and adapted guidelines

Today a major update went online and we improved and added quite a bit. So what's new? Here the new features in brief, but please consider having a look at the guidelines, especially at the new example to read the details.

1. Unknown songs

If you're sure there was a song, but you don't know its name, it's now possible to add an @Unknown tag. Example:

• Stone Temple Pilots at City Park, New Orleans

2. @Info for whole concerts

If not only a song but the whole concert was special, add @Info[your text] in the very last line of the setlist. Thanks to Jay for suggesting that one.

• Elton John at Madison Square Garden, New York
• The Rolling Stones at Scott Stadium, Charlottesville

3. Gravatars

setlist.fm is now supporting avatars from Gravatar.com, just upload your gravatar there and it'll be included into your setlist.fm profile, your edits and your comments automagically (if you use the same email address). 

4. Setlist.fm on twitter, myspace and last.fm

To stay uptodate what's happening on setlist.fm, follow us on twitter - don't worry we'll be tweeting no more than once or twice a week - don't be irritated from previous tweets, we'll change that behaviour. If you're on last.fm, add us as friend - the same applies for myspace!

5. Thanks

Thanks to all of you boys and girls out there that are keeping the setlist-statistics clean and that keep on adding setlists! Thanks to Luis, Luis, leglessmoof, Robin, Beau, raistnaarson, tgelbrecht, emicom and all the others!

Farin Urlaub Racing Team in concert

Being a member of "The Best Band in the World" on weekdays, Farin Urlaub chose to do some solo stuff. But he actually didn't plan to perform his songs on stage or to go on tour. But due to popular demand he founded a band called "Farin Urlaub Racing Team" (FURT) in 2002 and went on tour. 

Now he's back on tour with his fourth album (the first studio album of FURT). He already sold out big venues such as the Palladium in Cologne, the Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt or the Sporthalle in Hamburg in advance but also plays at lesser known locations such as the Tenniseventcenter in Hohenems/Austria where he played yesterday in a quite - well let's call it intimate atmosphere. Although with some spaces in the audience left, Farin Urlaub didn't lose his humor and seemed to be quite amused to see the smallest "Wall of Death" in history. After all great, funny and - as usual - long show featuring 29 songs of all of his albums. Here's the setlist:

• Farin Urlaub at T.E.C. Hohenems, Austria on December 7, 2008

And what's up next? In Extremo, Grossstadtgeflüster and Russkaja! Check out soundevent.at for great concerts.