Why we do this
Music has been handed to a few companies. Spotify decides what gets heard, Universal and the other majors own what gets released, and ticket giants own the room between the band and the audience. Simuze is our way of pushing back.
We are building an open network for every musician and every scene: the punk basement, the jazz café, the pop venue, the squat, the singer in a village hall. A place where you can see who plays where, who books what, and who you could play with next, without an algorithm between you and the people you want to reach. Simuze is free, has no ads and does not sell your data.
A network like that is only useful when the places and people are already in it. Waiting until every venue and every band signs up would mean an empty map for years. So we start by listing what is already public, and we hand every page to the people it is about.
What we make
Pages for music venues, with the name, address, website and a logo or photo. Shows those venues publish on their own agenda. And a page for each act on those lineups, so every name on a show links somewhere. Where we can, a page also gets a short text from the venue's or act's own website or from Wikipedia, the styles of its shows, a photo and a spot on the map, always with the source named.
We keep only what a venue or act publishes about itself. We do not keep private email addresses or phone numbers. When we find a general address on the venue's own website, like info@ or booking@, we keep it to get in touch, and we never show it on the site.
Where it comes from
Venue facts come from OpenStreetMap (see data attribution), from lists we put together and checked by hand, and from the venue's own website. Shows come only from the agenda on the venue's own website, read by our agenda reader. SimuzeBot tells you exactly what it fetches and how to stop it. Tickets always link to the venue or the ticket shop it uses.
In search engines, once there is something to show
A page nobody runs yet can be found in Google and other search engines when it has something on it: a photo, a text, a show or music. A page with nothing on it stays out, because it would only be noise. Either way the page works on Simuze itself, in cities, shows and search. Once you claim the page, it is yours.
How we get in touch
Every page says that nobody runs it yet, and anyone can claim it. Some places we contact ourselves, with a short email to an address on their own website. We say what is on the page already and who asked for it, and we write to an act only when it has a show coming up or one that just happened. When nobody answers we write again after two weeks and after about six weeks, and after that about twice a year for as long as the page stays unclaimed. Anyone who asks us to stop gets nothing more from us. Squats, self-run and political places we only contact personally, never through a system.
Taking over a page
If you run the venue or you are the act, claim the page. You prove it with a code we send to an email address on your own domain, with a code in your Instagram bio that one of us checks, or when a member of the page confirms it is you. After that you decide what is on it, and claiming is free, now and later.
Getting off Simuze
Every page nobody runs has a remove button. You do not have to explain anything and you do not need an account. The page and the shows on it disappear right away, and we keep a note that it was removed, so nothing brings it back a month later: not OpenStreetMap, not an agenda, not a lineup.
Something else wrong, or a question? Send us a message through the contact form.