Edmtrain Concerts & Raves

Review by eFreeware

If you go out to hear electronic music more than a couple of times a year, Edmtrain is built for you. It gathers touring DJs and producers, club nights and festivals across the US and Canada into a single place, so you can see who is playing near you instead of piecing it together from promoter pages and social feeds. It is free, and it is one of the older names in this space, first released in 2013.

The pitch is simple: browse what is coming up, listen to the artists on the bill, then follow an official link to buy tickets or catch a presale. Directions to the venue are a tap away. For anyone who plans weekends around a lineup, that covers most of the work before a night out.

It is not only for the electronic crowd. The app also lists popular artists passing through your city in hip hop, pop, rap, rock and country, which makes it more useful as a general going-out tool than the name suggests.

Following the tours that matter to you

The core of the app is a touring view: which DJs and producers are on the road, and where they are stopping. If your taste runs to house, techno, dubstep, trance, trap or drum & bass, the listings are organized around those sounds rather than treating electronic music as one undifferentiated block. That matters when a city has several shows on the same night and you want to pick the one that fits.

Coverage stretches across North America, with events in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Las Vegas, Chicago, Denver, Toronto, Houston, Dallas and Charlotte among the cities named. If you live in a mid-sized city or a smaller market, the value depends on how often tours route through it, and that is worth weighing before you commit to checking the app regularly.

The most recent update adds a way to like artists and get notified when one of them announces a show nearby. That turns the app from something you open when you remember into something that taps you on the shoulder, which is the feature I would lean on most if I were using it.

Festivals get their own space, framed around events worth traveling for. If you are the type to build a trip around a weekend lineup, that section is likely where you will spend the most time.

Listening before you commit

One feature I like the shape of is the ability to listen to the artists on a bill before deciding. Lineups often include names you have never heard, and being able to preview them inside the app removes a step that otherwise sends you off to a music service and back.

There is also a media section for keeping up with the electronic music scene, which gives the app a reason to be opened between events rather than only when a date is approaching. How much that matters depends on whether you want news and scene coverage in the same place as your calendar, or whether you would rather keep the two separate.

The app does not replace a dedicated music service for deep listening, and it is not trying to. It is a preview tool attached to an event listing, and judged that way it does the job it sets out to do.

Tickets, directions and the community side

When you find something, the app points you to official links for tickets and presales rather than handling the sale itself. That is the right call for trust, since you end up on the seller's own page, but it does mean the purchase experience lives outside the app.

Directions are handled with a tap, which is a small thing that saves real friction on the night, particularly at venues you have not been to before.

The other half of the app is the community. The developer says thousands of contributors and millions of users are involved, and users can add events themselves so others can find them. That is what allows coverage to extend beyond the big tours into smaller nights. It also means listings depend on people bothering to submit them, so the depth of what you see will vary by city.

What you need before you start

There is not much to set up. You install the app, and the listings are there to browse; the artist alerts are tied to liking artists, so the more you mark, the more the app has to work with. Nothing suggests you need an account to look around.

The app is free. That keeps the decision simple: a free listing service. For an app you might open a few times a month, that is a reasonable trade.

It carries a Teen rating, which fits a listings app that points to nightlife and festivals. Expect to see events aimed at adults, with the usual age rules applied at the door rather than in the app.

Where it earns a place on your phone

Edmtrain is at its best for people in or near a major market who go to electronic shows regularly and want one place to see who is coming. The touring view, the festival section and the artist alerts work together well for that. It is also a decent general event app if your taste spreads into hip hop, pop, rock or country, since those listings sit alongside the electronic ones.

If you travel for festivals, the combination of a North America-wide view and ticket links is genuinely useful for planning months ahead. If you are mostly a casual listener who goes out once or twice a year, the app will still work, but the alerts and browsing are built for people who check often.

The rating picture is worth a mention: a 4.9 average from more than 4,600 ratings, with over 100,000 installs. Those numbers suggest a settled, well-liked tool rather than a new arrival, and the fact that it has been updated recently indicates it is still being worked on.

A dependable companion for electronic music nights

I would install Edmtrain if electronic music is a regular part of my calendar and I want to stop missing shows because I did not hear about them in time. The artist alerts, the touring listings and the festival coverage answer the question the app exists to answer, and the ticket and directions links close the loop.

The caveats are straightforward. It is free with ads, coverage leans on community submissions for smaller events, and the value of the listings depends on how often artists come to your area. None of that undermines what the app is for.

For club-goers, ravers and festival travelers in the US and Canada, this is a sensible thing to keep installed. If your listening is mostly at home, the app will feel like more calendar than you need.

What's new

Like artists and be notified when they announce a nearby show