Your Favorite Bands — Now Playing Near You!

iConcertCal is a personalized concert calendar built for iTunes. It’s a free plug-in that works with iTunes to give you the concert schedule of any artist in your collection that is playing near your home in the next four months.

The program, which is available for both Windows and Mac, took me all of 45 seconds to download, install, and open. Switching between the view of my music and the view of the calendar is an easy ctrl-t click away. (click image to see a larger screenshot)

In under a minute, I had found that one of my most favorite bands is playing less than 5 miles from my house on July 3. This is a fact that would have most likely escaped me otherwise.

Listed to the left of the calendar is a list of the concerts. Just click on the show you are interested in seeing, and iConcertCal opens your internet browser to a page with ticket and venue information.

These days, I don’t pick up the weekly local entertainment paper. I don’t have time to cull through it looking for that one show a month that I am enthusiastic enough to go see. We love concerts. We love going out. We just aren’t inspired enough anymore to search for the opportunities.

I don’t love my iPod, but I do like iTunes for easy access to music. I just love a beautiful CD jacket way too much to be strictly an iPod girl, though. However, with addition of this lovely little concert calendar plug-in, iTunes has suddenly become even more appealing.

And don’t forget that it’s free!