How to log a gig you went to years ago
Back-dating is the single best move you can make when you start a gig diary. Here's the fastest way to log a show you went to last year — or fifteen years ago.
The most useful thing you can do in your first week on Banded is back-date — sit down and log every gig you can remember, however far back. A diary with one entry isn’t much. A diary with two hundred entries is something you’ll keep coming back to.
This guide walks through the fastest way to do it.
The basic loop
For each gig you want to add:
- Open the Log tab (the + icon)
- Search for the artist — Banded checks MusicBrainz and Apple Music, so most acts come up after a couple of letters
- Pick the date — Banded lets you go back as far as you want
- Add the venue — search the venue database or type free text if the venue’s not listed or has closed
- Rate the artist and venue — out of 5 each, half-stars supported
- Optional: review, support acts, tour name, ticket price
- Save
It takes about 15 seconds per gig once you’re in the rhythm.
The faster way: sources to crib from
If you’re trying to reconstruct a long history, you don’t need to remember everything from scratch. The four best memory aids:
1. Old ticket confirmation emails
Search your inbox for “ticket,” “your booking,” “confirmation,” or specific vendors like “Ticketmaster,” “DICE,” “SeeTickets,” “Resident Advisor,” “Eventbrite,” “AXS,” “Songkick.” You’ll find the artist, date, and venue ready-made.
2. Your Photos library
Filter by year and skim for gig shots. The metadata on each photo tells you the date and often the venue. Even bad phone-camera photos of a stage are a perfect trigger for “right, that’s where I was that night.”
3. Setlist.fm “I was there” list
If you’ve used Setlist.fm in the past, your profile has a list of attended shows. Open it on your phone or laptop and log them into Banded one by one.
4. Friends with better memories than yours
If you went to a gig with someone who’s already on Banded, check their profile — the gig will be there. Tap “Also been” on their post and it gets added to your diary too (with the same artist, venue, and date pre-filled).
What if I’m only 60% sure?
Log it anyway. Use the date you think it was, mark the venue with your best guess, and put a note in the review like “pretty sure this was the Apollo, might’ve been the Academy.” You can edit any field later when better information surfaces.
A diary with approximate dates is much more valuable than no diary at all.
How long to take
Most people who properly back-date spend about one evening on it and get the bulk of their history in. Pour a drink, put on a playlist, and treat it as nostalgic admin. By the end of two hours you’ll have a profile that looks like you’ve been using Banded for years.
After that, the cadence becomes natural — you log each new gig the morning after.
Festivals
If you’ve been to festivals, log them as a single festival entry rather than thirty separate gigs. Tap the festival toggle when logging, name the festival, and you can add the individual acts you remember underneath. This keeps your diary readable and your year-end stats clean.
What about gigs without a clear “headliner”?
Local club nights, multi-band bills, unannounced support acts — these don’t always have a clean headliner. Log whichever artist is the strongest anchor in your memory. If three of equal billing played, pick the one you remember best; you can add the others as “support acts” on the same record.
When you’re done
Your diary is now a real thing. Most people find they keep going back to it — to remember a date, to settle an argument with a friend, to look at a year that felt thin and discover it actually wasn’t.
If you find Banded missing an artist or venue, that’s almost always an upstream gap in MusicBrainz or Apple Music. Drop us a line at [email protected] and we’ll figure out the best fix.