Before the digital age, attending a live concert was full of delightful unknowns. You might know the band’s scheduled performance time, but the exact moment the headliner would grace the stage or finish their encore remained a mystery. While a new album meant fresh material, guessing which classic hits or deep cuts might make a surprise appearance was a true challenge. And spotting a rare cover song? That required a seasoned ear and encyclopedic knowledge.
Enter Setlist.fm, the collaborative online archive that’s fundamentally changed this dynamic. Much like a Wikipedia for concertgoers, the site allows users to meticulously document every song played by artists on tour, updating in real time and cataloging performances dating back centuries (yes, even Mozart!). Beyond simple song lists, Setlist.fm now offers a wealth of statistics: which songs are most frequent, when a particular track was last performed, and even average show start times and overall set lengths.
This explosion of readily available data has, as one might expect from any internet-driven innovation, reshaped the live music experience. It’s both a blessing and a curse, as Jay-Z might aptly put it, to have such extensive information at your fingertips.
For artists, Setlist.fm serves as a powerful tool. It helps them avoid repeating recent performances in the same city, ensuring their shows stay fresh and engaging for loyal fans. For concert attendees, the site can be a practical consumer guide, helping them decide if a show is worth the ticket price or even when to schedule a bathroom break, or how late the babysitter will be needed. However, some critics argue that this wealth of information strips away the spontaneity and mystery that once defined a thrilling live performance.
Setlist.fm’s rise has been both pervasive and subtly impactful. While details of its origins are scarce, Live Nation Entertainment, its parent company, confirms it was founded in 2008 by Molindo, an Austrian media agency known for Songtexte, a German lyric compilation site. Joe Fleischer, Setlist.fm’s publisher and a Live Nation studio head, describes the founders as “giant music fans and big data nerds,” emphasizing the site’s core purpose: utility for fans.
Though acquired by Live Nation in 2010 (and announced two years later), Setlist.fm truly flourished. In 2012, it housed over 400,000 set lists for 24,000 artists, reaching 1.5 million monthly users. Today, that number has skyrocketed to over 9 million set lists for 400,000 artists, drawing 80 million annual users. A new set list is created every 20 seconds, and users spend an impressive average of eight minutes on the site, a testament to its deeply engaged community.
Fleischer notes that a small team of about a dozen individuals manages editorial, marketing, and engineering for Setlist.fm. The site expanded into news articles years ago, introduced concert set times in 2021, and recently added a “dark mode” for discreet viewing during shows.
Massive artists have fueled Setlist.fm’s popularity. Taylor Swift’s 2023 Eras Tour launch in Glendale, Arizona, for instance, saw approximately 700,000 people simultaneously refreshing the site – a record-breaking traffic surge. Such elaborate stadium shows often have fixed productions, making initial set lists widely known. To maintain an element of surprise, artists like Swift, Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga, Fall Out Boy, and the Jonas Brothers now incorporate “surprise” songs or guest appearances. Even the highly anticipated Oasis reunion tour this summer generated significant buzz on the site, with fans meticulously discussing the band’s B-sides and album tracks.
John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats admits to checking Setlist.fm nightly to vary his solo acoustic segments. While he acknowledges a younger self might have resisted such transparency, he believes the broader internet, not just Setlist.fm, is responsible for the loss of a live “mystery,” as artists can no longer truly debut new, unfinished material without it instantly going viral online. “That’s an internet issue,” he clarified, “not a Setlist.fm issue.”
However, Setlist.fm’s prominence hasn’t been without its detractors. Roger Daltrey of The Who famously stated last year that online set lists have “ruined” live shows for him, lamenting the absence of surprises. Jack White, responding to fan demands for longer sets, emphasized on Instagram that “There’s no setlist, and it’s not a Marvel movie. It’s rock and roll and it’s a living breathing organism.”
Daltrey later clarified to The Times that social media and the internet broadly have diminished the element of surprise for bands. He fondly recalled a time when “the power of word of mouth left people more room for imagination, and enjoyment.” White’s spokesperson declined further comment.
Addressing the “mystery” debate, Fleischer views it as an “existential” concern but notes his team rarely receives complaints. He humorously points out that one common feedback is its utility for “bathroom-break planning.” While respecting Daltrey’s “valid position,” Fleischer suggests that fans who prefer surprises can simply avoid checking the site until after the show.
Despite carrying advertisements, Setlist.fm’s revenue likely represents a minuscule fraction of parent company Live Nation’s $896 million annual profit. Live Nation, a colossal concert promoter and owner of Ticketmaster, doesn’t disclose specific earnings for Setlist.fm. A company spokesperson asserts that Setlist.fm’s main objective is to “deepen fan engagement around concerts, which we believe fuels greater interest in the live experience, leading to increased attendance.”
(It’s worth noting that Live Nation currently faces significant legal challenges, including a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit over alleged illegal ticket resale tactics and an antitrust suit from the Justice Department, which claims the company operates as a monopoly, stifling competition and inflating ticket prices for consumers.)
A dedicated community of volunteer moderators, like Martin Lefebvre, a 28-year-old government statistician from Paris, meticulously curates Setlist.fm. He dedicates roughly 30 minutes daily to ensure accuracy, correcting errors like miscapitalized song titles. “Why I do this is because I want the site to be perfect,” he explains.
This level of detailed tracking echoes the long-standing traditions of devoted fan bases for jam bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish. Decades before the internet, publications like DeadBase and fan-operated websites such as Phish.net were already compiling extensive set list archives for their respective groups.
Aaron Stein, a 51-year-old Brooklyn nanoscientist who maintains a personal spreadsheet of every concert he’s attended over three decades, commends Setlist.fm for democratizing this kind of information, making it accessible to fans of all artists, not just niche genres. “It’s become one of those resources that you almost take for granted,” he remarked, highlighting the “big deal” addition of set times.
Stein offers a nuanced perspective on the impact of published set lists, suggesting that documenting a concert post-event can actually extend the shared experience. “It does take some of the magic out, but it adds a different kind of magic,” he said, questioning, “What’s wrong with things changing over time?”
Even artists like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, an Australian jam band known for their ever-evolving set lists, find Setlist.fm invaluable. Stu Mackenzie, the band’s singer and multi-instrumentalist, acknowledges that while their dedicated site, KGLW.net, also tracks sets, Setlist.fm simplifies the process. “It’s genuinely very, very helpful,” Mackenzie states. “What blows my mind is that we’re doing a show and then by the time we get offstage, generally our set lists are on there.”
The site’s utility extends beyond jam bands. Mac McCaughan, singer-guitarist for indie band Superchunk, uses Setlist.fm to ensure variety in their city-specific performances. “It’s a super useful resource for me that way,” he affirmed.
Stuart Braithwaite, guitarist for the Scottish instrumental band Mogwai, has embraced Setlist.fm since their own fan site went offline. “I like the idea that it probably shames bands from playing the same set every night, which I think is the height of laziness,” he quipped. He also uses it as a fan, confessing, “A couple of years ago, I went to see a lot of Cure shows, and I’d just check it every day and see what songs they played, like a total dork.” He dismisses concerns about losing surprise, arguing it “spreads the experience out from just the single night that the concert takes place.”
Ella Shipman, a 20-year-old Emerson College junior and self-proclaimed “huge fan of Taylor Swift and Setlist.fm,” relies on the site for upcoming shows. “I want to know what songs I’m going to be screaming at the top of my lungs,” she explained. During Swift’s Eras Tour, Shipman followed Setlist.fm updates for surprise songs, alongside live video streams on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. She concludes, “You didn’t have to be in the stadium to know what was going on.”