SOUND OFF

Searching through all the listings of concerts coming to town can be a hassle. There's a wealth of information out there, usually presented by date, but it can be a bit mind-numbing to scroll through it all. Sometimes you want an easy-to-digest overall picture of, say, artists coming to Boston over the summer. I've recently started using Bandsintown.com, a remarkably simple site developed by two local 20-somethings that lists hundreds of shows alphabetically on one page - with an emphasis on your favorite musicians and others the site thinks you might like. All I had to do was enter my top artists, a date range, and city, and I could instantly see that Jenny Lewis was coming because her name was larger than life - meaning I love her. (Although, forgive me Boston, I must protest the Aerosmith recommendation.) When I hovered the cursor over Lewis's name, the date and venue popped up (House of Blues, June 10), as did a mixtape of her music; a click gives you show details. Bandsintown crawls the Web looking at 50-plus ticketing sites, artist profiles, social networking sites, and venue listings (all the way down to a Melrose VFW post), and the method isn't perfect. On my page, the band name Ash appeared slightly larger, so I decided to take a listen. Ash isn't bad, the only problem is that the group isn't playing Berklee's Cafe 939 on June 2 (although Among the Oak and Ash is). But it turns out Jessica Lea Mayfield, a twangy-folkie I really like, is playing that night , so I did end up discovering a show I wanted to go to - in the usual circuitous ways of the Web.