Hello Cleveland, a One-Stop-Shop for Live Music Listings, Debuts with Rock Hall Bump

For as long as Cleveland's had a music scene there have been attempts—some longer running than others—to promote it.

Meaning, to get potential audience members to shows. You had the Plain Dealer's Friday! Magazine (until 2020). You had The Free Times, River Burn, and this publication. (The last man standing, cough cough.) Today, you have Eventbrite, Facebook, Google, Destination Cleveland. And new ones popping up discreetly from time to time.

Yet the main argument from Sean Watterson and Cindy Barber, venue owners who debuted highlights from the Greater Cleveland Music Census at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last week, is pretty simple: Cleveland simply does not have one, trusted, go-to compilation of live event listings. (Eighty-three percent of venues complained they still need help "finding audiences.")

To put it otherwise: The scene, just as it is spatially, isn't centralized.
From this argument comes Hello Cleveland, an aspirational one-stop shop for goings on in the city's live music and comedy industry.

Created with help from the Rock Hall's IT department, the site debuted last Thursday with automated show listings from 16 local venues, from the Beachland Ballroom to Watterson's Happy Dog to the House of Blues and No Class.

"This here is a decade in the making," Watterson said during his and Barber's presentation last Thursday. "Because we lost that one place to go in a lot of ways."

Clearly influenced by the minimalism and ease-of-use of Washington, D.C.'s own live music portal, users of Hello Cleveland can filter events by date, venue and region. The latter two where the service, Watterson told Scene, will see improvement in the next year or so, as more venues are added to the mix.

But who should Hello Cleveland ignore or include? Are tinier venues like the Little Rose Tavern and Spotlight Cleveland worth adding just as much as the larger corporate entities that run Blossom and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse?

In an interview after his speech, Watterson implied that venues will be added to Hello Cleveland based on a loose submission process with little hardened criteria.

Watterson urges venues to reach out to Cleveland Rocks or the Cleveland Independent Venue Association to have their calendars included, though Hello Cleveland won't be adding space for theaters at this time.

"I mean, it's really just, Do you look like a live music or comedy venue?" he said. "The idea here is to be complete when it comes to live music and comedy. We're not setting out to be exclusive or elitist. But we're not going to capture absolutely everything."

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