Today launched Tourb.us, a service made for music lovers who like to go to shows in their area and find new music. Tourb.us uses a unique system to crawl the web looking for concert dates and bands to help keep members stay up to date on upcoming shows for their favorite bands. Although tourb.us mostly crawls sites for information in the metro areas of Boston, Seattle, Austin, and San Fransico, users may also contribute to populate shows in other areas.

The way it works is simple. You signup and add your favorite bands to your profile, either by uploading an iTunes data file, allowing Tourb.us to connect to your Last.fm account, or by simply typing in your favorite bands. Tourb.us will then notify you of any upcoming shows for your favorite bands in your area. Furthermore, Tourb.us allows you to search for shows, bands, and venues that are located in your area. I find this very neat and I was surprised when I searched for my little ol’ town in Connecticut and found many results for venues and bands that I am familiar of. If Tourb.us can’t match all of the artists you added to your profile, it will place them in a Wishlist area and notify you when they get information on the artist. The system has already found and collected information on about 10 bands in my Wishlist and it’s great to see the familiar names appear over time.

Tourb.us is more then just a gateway to local, live music. It is also a social system where you can make friends with others that have a similar taste in music. Tourb.us also makes it simple to find friends in your area because of its attendance functionality where users can find shows in their area and specify if they are going to it or not, or if they are possibly going to go to it. For example, when an upcoming show appears in my profile, I can see a number of people attending it. I’ve already found one venue around 45 minutes away from where I live that says two users are going to go to it. The only thing though is that you can friend them and I couldn’t find a way of getting in contact with friends. Still, it’s great to see shows in your area that other users are attending.

All bands and venues that are listed in Tourb.us also have their own profiles. Users can find their favorite bands, view photos, learn about the band, and even comment in their profile. If a user feels some information is missing or wants to contribute to a band that doesn’t have any information listed, Tourb.us uses a little wiki-like system allowing users to easily modify the bands profile themselves. And yes, you can tag your favorite bands as well. When viewing a venue profile, it will show all upcoming shows for that area, as well as provide a map and directions to the venue.

Although Tourb.us just launched, it appears to already be packed with bands and venues. I never knew there were so many venues in my area until signing up and there are some new places that I’m going to have to check out. It’s fun to receive these notifications of shows in my area, and in fact, there is one in 10 days that I am thinking of going to. All in all, if your a music lover, Tourb.us is for you. It will help you keep up with shows in your area and maybe even help you find a few new friends while your at it.