Updates on the new edit form

Major changes usually come with different sorts of criticism. The new setlist add and edit form was no difference. We've been collecting your opinions ever since the start of the new edit form some two weeks ago and took your suggestions by heart. The edit form should now be both easier to use for novice editors and more efficient for experienced editors. So without much further ado, here are the main changes:

One mandatory step instead of three

It's not necessary anymore to navigate through three steps in order to add a setlist. It's sufficient to  add artist, venue and date in order to create a setlist. You'll then be redirected to the page where you can add the songs, but this isn't mandatory anymore as the setlist has already been created after submitting the initial form.
Previously there was a second step that allowed you to select tour and assign a festival. Now, this step got moved out of the creation process. If autocorrection is enabled (it's enabled by default), the tour will be selected automatically. You can always add/edit a setlist's tour or festival after submitting the setlist or by clicking the "Edit tour & festival" link on any setlist or search result.

New edit setlist component

The edit setlis links got a nice little update. Click the arrow after the link and choose what you'd like to edit.

Hope you enjoy the updates. Feel free to comment on it in the forum.

Features Explained: New Edit Form

UPDATE: with your help we've improved the form further, please read the updates on the edit form.


Since the end of the last year, setlist.fm has a so-called responsive design, that aims to give you an optimal viewing experience no matter what device you're using.

The only part of the website that still remained "a bit" tedious to use for all other devices than a desktop computer was the edit form. So today, after months of testing and developing, we've launched the new edit form.

The new form is a 3-step wizard that should make it easier for you to add and edit setlists on both your mobile and desktop device. There's a new tutorial that explains how to add and edit setlists by three short videos, although it's actually quite easy anyway. Here are some features that aren't explained in detail but will help new and experienced users to add and edit setlists even faster and better:

Line-by-line form vs. big text field

On the third page of the wizard, there's a tab that lets you switch between the line-by-line form and the text field. If you don't like to switch tabs each time you edit a setlist, head over to your user settings and select "Text Field" in the "Preferred Edit Format"

Share your location on the "Add setlist" page

If you share your location, venues near you will show up higher in the venue autocomplete text field. That's basically the only reason why the page asks for your location. Less typing for you. We don't perform any other actions with the location you share with us on this page.

Power Editors

For "Power Editors" that add whole tours of their favourite artists, there's the option to display a "power editor form" after submitting a setlist. You'll find the setting to display it on your user settings page. You'll see that you're even faster with the wizard than you were before with the old form.

The green part is the "Power Editor form"

Assigning a setlist to a festival

We have also improved the selection of festivals. More relevant and nearer festivals to the venue you've selected are now preferred and we made the list pageable.

Losing your connection while adding a setlist

Internet connections on concerts and festivals are often very unstable. So adding a setlist at the concert itself might result in losing the connection midway through the concert. This then often gets combined with an accidental reload (or a reload triggered by your smartphone).
To solve this problem we use HTML5 Web storage to save your current setlist for you even without active internet connection.
You'll always be able to restore your edits as long as you use the same device and haven't submitted the setlist (in the latter case the setlist will be stored on our servers anyway, so there's even less need to worry).

So, now that you know more about the reasons why there's a new editor, please try it out and post your opinions - positive and negative ones - to the forum.

tl;dr: new edit form, have fun and/or complain in the forum

Features Explained: Search Engine

Well it's been quite I while since we've last posted something on this blog. But we thought it's time to give it another try. We'll be using this space here to explain to you some of the hidden features on setlist.fm, the ones that we use really often and enjoy a lot but need some background knowledge and/or clicking around to find out.

So let's start with one of the most used and therefore also most worked on features: the search engine. Here are some nice quirks you can use while searching:

1. Use aliases for searching

Whenever you're searching for a setlist, you can use common aliases for both artist and venue. For example if you're searching for "Bruce Springsteen" setlists you could also use his nickname "The Boss".

You can also combine this search with a venue abbreviation, e.g. "MSG" is an abbreviation for "Madison Square Garden". So a search for "the boss msg" yields this result page:

2. Filter the search results

Once you have the search page in front of you, it can be quite overwhelming. Especially when you're searching for a generic name or an artist with a lot of setlists.
This is where filtering (or so-called "faceted browsing") comes in handy. There's a box that says "Filter Setlists" on the left hand side of the screen - for smaller screens it's on the top and you have to click on the link that says "Show filter options" first.

The box shows search results by artist, country and year. The number in parenthesis is the amount of results found. In the example on the left there are 2232 setlists found for "Bruce Springsteen".

You can now click on any artist to show setlists only by this very artist. All other artists get excluded from the search results.

The same of course applies for country and year. You can combine the three filters if you want to. E.g. you could click on "Bruce Springsteen", "Spain" and "2012" to get a search result that only displays setlists for Bruce Sprinsteen in Spain in the year 2012 that also match the search query you entered (in our example it's "the boss").


In order to deactivate a filter just click the name again. In our example: if you want to see all setlists by Bruce Springsteen in the year 2012 for all countries, click "Spain" again .

You can even tweak this more by narrowing down your search result and e.g. search for "the boss barcelona" and then filter it by Artist, Country and Year.

Filtering works for every search result where the filter box is visible. If the box isn't visible then there's nothing to filter and you already see the most narrowed down search result.

So now go and search for your favourite artist - we'll be back with another feature explanation soon!