Songkick was founded in 2007 by
Ian Hogarth, Michelle You and Pete Smith as part of the 2007
Y Combinator program, a
seed accelerator that focuses on technology start-ups. Songkick's initial business model, based on its concert discovery service, was based on referral fees from ticketing companies. The company launched its first mobile application in 2011. In June 2015, Songkick merged with CrowdSurge, an artist ticketing services provider, with the combined company operating under the Songkick name. CrowdSurge was founded by Matt Jones in 2008, and he and Hogarth said they decided to merge the two companies to correct “a massive inefficiency in the market.” Songkick had systems to detect
ticket resellers, reduce the incentive for reselling (e.g., by creating general admissions areas, rather than assigned seats) and make it easier for regular fans to buy tickets (e.g., by having multiple releases of tickets, not just one release) that have reduced the percentage of concert tickets that end up in the secondary market to 1.5 percent of the total. Jones and Hogarth served as co-CEOs of Songkick until Jones took on the role of CEO in January 2016. In December 2016, Songkick filed an
antitrust lawsuit against
Live Nation Entertainment and its
Ticketmaster division. The lawsuit was later amended to accuse it of stealing trade secrets, by means of former Songkick employees who had joined the company. Jones described Live Nation as having "effectively blocked our U.S. ticketing business". In January 2018, shortly prior to a pending trial, Live Nation settled the lawsuit for $110 million, and also acquired the remaining intellectual property not sold to WMG for an undisclosed amount. In December 2020, Live Nation agreed to pay a $10 million fine for violations of the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,
wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, after admitting that an employee from an unspecified competitor to Ticketmaster had used stolen credentials to obtain information on ticket presales, instructed them on how to exploit the competitor's URL generation system to view details on concerts that had not yet been announced, and was promoted by the company after presenting said information. In November 2025,
Suno acquired Songkick from Warner Music Group. ==API==