Every gig-goer in the UK keeps a list. Almost nobody keeps it well. The list exists because the instinct is right: those nights matter, and you want a record of them. The problem is where the list lives.
The Gig List Everyone Keeps Badly
There are three systems, and you're running one of them right now.
The first is the Notes app list. It's called something like "gigs 2019-" and it has 40 entries, most of them just a band name. Maybe a venue if you were feeling thorough. Somewhere in the middle there's a line that says "IDLES ???" because you couldn't remember whether it was 2021 or 2022 by the time you got round to adding it, and you never went back to check.
The second is the spreadsheet. Started in a burst of ambition in January, columns for artist, venue, date, support act, ticket price. Beautiful for about six weeks. Then festival season hit, you saw eleven acts across one weekend, the thought of entering them all was exhausting, and the spreadsheet quietly died. It still exists. It ends in June.
The third is pure memory, which works right up until it doesn't. It's the argument in the pub about which year you saw them at Leeds, with no way to settle it. It's knowing you did the O2 Academy circuit hard in your twenties, Bristol, Birmingham, Brixton, but not being able to name half the bills. It's the last-train dash out of Brixton that you remember vividly, attached to a gig you can no longer place.
Here's the position this article takes: the Notes app list was a good instinct pointed at the wrong tool. The instinct to track gigs is exactly right. You just need something built for the job.
What a Proper Gig Tracker Records
Strip away everything optional and a gig log needs six fields:
- Artist. Headliner at minimum. Support acts if you can, because in ten years the support act is often the better story.
- Venue. King Tut's and Wembley Arena are different memories entirely. The room is half the gig.
- Date. The single field the Notes list always drops, and the one you'll want most.
- Who you went with. Gigs are social memories. "Saw Fontaines D.C." and "saw Fontaines D.C. with Dan the week before he moved to Australia" are not the same entry.
- One moment worth keeping. A sentence. The wall of noise in the encore, the crowd carrying the chorus, the pint that went flying during the opener. One line is enough to reopen the whole night later.
- Your song of the night. The one that landed hardest. This is your personal setlist highlight, and no database can record it for you.
That's the core, and it takes about 30 seconds to capture. Everything else, photos, ratings, the full setlist, ticket stubs, is enhancement. Valuable enhancement, but the six fields above are the difference between a record and a list of names.
Why the Notes App List Always Dies
The Notes list fails for structural reasons, not because you're lazy.
There's no structure, so every entry is formatted differently and half of them are missing the date. There are no prompts, so you never think to write down who you went with or what the best song was. There are no setlists, no photos attached, no stats, nothing that accumulates into anything. It's a flat list of band names that slowly stops meaning anything, because a band name with no date and no detail isn't a memory. It's an answer to a quiz question.
And the details you're relying on your brain to hold? They go fast. Memory research consistently shows that specifics fade within weeks of an event, and what survives gets rewritten every time you recall it. We went deep on this in The Science of Concert Memories, but the short version is brutal: the version of the gig in your head a year later is a reconstruction, not a recording. If you didn't capture the details early, they're gone, and your brain will quietly invent replacements.
This is also why the spreadsheet dies. A spreadsheet has structure, but it lives on a laptop you open at a desk, and gigs don't happen at desks. Which leads to a position worth stating plainly: a gig log that lives in your pocket beats a beautiful system you update quarterly. Every time.
The App as Your Gig Tracker
This is the job Concerts Remembered was built for. It's a concert tracking app for iOS and Android that treats your gig history like it matters, because it does.
The core loop is deliberately fast. Logging a gig takes about 30 seconds: artist, venue, date, who you were with, a quick rating, one note. Then the app pulls the setlist in automatically, synced from setlist.fm's fan-maintained database. To be clear about who does what: setlist.fm is the setlist database, built and corrected by fans, with deep coverage of UK venues and tours going back decades. Concerts Remembered is the tracker that brings that setlist data into your personal record and keeps it alongside your photos, your rating, and your memories. One entry, one place. Not a Notes line here, a camera roll photo there, a setlist bookmarked in a browser tab, and a half-memory doing the rest.
Once your gigs are in, the stats start working for you. Most-seen bands. Venue counts. Gigs per year. You find out you've seen one band seven times and somehow never seen your supposed favourites live at all. You find out 2017 was your biggest year and you had no idea. A gig log with 50 entries stops being a list and starts being a portrait of your taste.
Then there's the feature built for the "which year was Leeds" argument. It's called Help me find it, and it works on half-remembered gigs: type the band, add a city and/or a rough year, and the app shows you the actual show history. You scan the list, recognise the night you were at, and import it with one tap, correct date and setlist included. The pub argument is now settled in under a minute, and the gig is in your record permanently.
And that Notes list with 40 entries and no dates? Don't retype it. The app has a web import tool that takes a pasted list in any state, band names, half-dates, "IDLES ???", all of it, and parses the mess into draft gigs for you to review and confirm. The good instinct you had all along finally gets the tool it deserved. If you want the full tour of what the app does, the complete guide to the Concerts Remembered app covers it end to end, and if you're still weighing up the category, here's what a concert tracker actually is.
Rebuilding the Back Catalogue
If you've got years of untracked gigs behind you, don't try to reconstruct everything in one sitting. Start with the landmark gigs, the ten or fifteen nights you'd rescue from a fire. Use Help me find it to pin down the dates you're unsure of. Paste the old Notes list in wholesale and let the import tool sort the wheat from the "???". Ticket emails, old photos, and mates' memories fill in the rest over time. We've written up the full method in how to find your concert history, and it recovers more than you'd expect.
The Habit
The habit that makes all of this work is simple, and it's the second position worth being blunt about: log on the way home, not "at the weekend." The weekend version never happens. It has never once happened.
The night bus works. The platform works. Typing the gig into your phone at Brixton, done before the train arrives, ears still ringing, is the whole system. Thirty seconds while the night is still loud in your head. Future-you, sitting at gig 300 and scrolling back through every room, every bill, every mate you dragged along, will be very glad you did.
Get the Concerts Remembered app and start with tonight's gig.
FAQ
Is there a gig tracker app?
Yes. Concerts Remembered is a gig tracker app for iOS and Android. You log each gig in about 30 seconds, the setlist syncs in automatically from setlist.fm's fan-maintained database, and your photos, ratings, and notes live in the same record. Over time it builds stats across your whole gig history: most-seen bands, venue counts, and gigs per year. You can get the app here.
How do I keep a gig diary?
Record six things per gig: artist, venue, date, who you went with, one moment worth keeping, and your song of the night. Do it on the way home while the details are fresh, because memory research shows specifics fade within weeks. A gig diary app makes this a 30-second habit and attaches the setlist and photos automatically, which is why it survives where the Notes app list dies.
What should a gig log include?
At minimum: artist, venue, and date. Those three make the entry findable forever. Beyond that, who you went with, a one-line memory, and your favourite song of the night turn a log entry into an actual record of the experience. Setlists, photos, and ratings are the enhancement layer. A tracker app adds those automatically or in a couple of taps.
Can I import my existing Notes app gig list?
Yes. The Concerts Remembered web import tool takes a pasted list in any state, even band names with no dates or entries like "IDLES ???", and parses it into draft gigs for you to review, correct, and confirm. You don't have to retype anything. Details are on the app page.
How do I find the date of a gig I half remember?
Use the app's Help me find it feature: type the band, add a city and/or an approximate year, and you'll see the actual show history for that artist. Recognise the night you were at, tap once, and it imports with the correct date and setlist. It's the fastest way to settle the "which year did we see them at Leeds" argument for good.
Does the app get setlists from setlist.fm?
Yes. setlist.fm is the fan-maintained setlist database, and its coverage of UK venues and tours is deep, from arena shows down to King Tut's and the O2 Academy circuit. Concerts Remembered syncs that setlist data into your personal gig record automatically when you log a show, so the setlist sits alongside your own photos, rating, and notes.
How is a gig tracker different from a spreadsheet?
A spreadsheet has structure but lives at a desk, so it gets updated in batches and eventually not at all. A gig tracker lives in your pocket, prompts you for the fields that matter, attaches setlists and photos, and turns your entries into stats. The honest test: which one will you actually open on the platform after the gig? For more on the category, see what a concert tracker is.
How long does it take to track gigs properly?
About 30 seconds per gig for the core entry, done on the way home. If you go to 12 gigs a year, that's six minutes annually to keep a permanent, searchable record of every show. Rebuilding a back catalogue takes longer, but the method in how to find your concert history breaks it into short sessions.
Share: