OSNAP.net logo

Rebuilding…
always rebuilding.

The Online Shows News and Announcements Project

We have been around forever* and always will be.

 

OSNAP.net started a long time ago (we're talking back in the 90's!), with the intention of becomming a repository and distribution engine for live events and news.

The domain OSNAP.net is actually an acronym for Online Shows, News and Announcements Project.
The acronym was born from the idea that information (live show information, upcoming events, news and important announcements) could be handled using a distributed network - API's leveraging XML, SOAP, and an odd collection of backend tools bundled together from when the Web wasn't all "two-point-oh" as it is now.

At its inception, OSNAP.net was a very manual tool - upcoming live events were input into our databases using a combination of fax (remember those machines!) delivery, hand-keying, and foot-soldiers visiting venues and gathering up calendar listings.

At our peak, we reached 69,000 artists and 3,000 venues (wow!), ingesting and distributing thousands upon thousands of event listings, music samples, and created several API's that were envtually marketed (and often "lifted" from us) across the Internet.
For a time, it was easy to find OSNAP.net code running on some popular Web networks and even a couple social networks!

Between 2010 and 2012 a lot happened with OSNAP.net: We made some great revenue partnerships, advanced funds for tour support, and even opened an office in Seattle, WA.
All was looking up for us, but one very difficult hurdle could not be bested: while advancements in automation had come a long way since the 1990's, the majority of managing the live event space was still manual and just proved too much to handle. A very suportive street-team had been established, and while the boots-on-the-ground team did keep the events flowing, it just became too much to handle from the top.

In 2015, OSNAP.net stopped adding resources to our engine and closed all consumer-facing domains. In the background, some API's are still active, and those using our storage and distribution engine will always have free access.


What about the "always?"

OSNAP.net has been a wonderful, varied project with many inputs and outputs - hell at one point we even built a magazine scanning system (MagStand forever!).
There's a lot of technology stored on drives, servers, even cloud instances all over the Web that will continue to be refined and make comebacks for decades to come.

Through nearly twenty years of tinkering we have seen some of our "firsts" become extraordinary victories - often for others, but sometimes for us. We made early partnerships with what were then fledgling companies, failed at solidifying partnerships with others (ahem Pandora) only to see them years later adopt our very ideas and flourish.
We're not bitter - instead, we are inspired to always develop, to always try, and always keep the innovation coming.
If others succeed in completing a task we tried early on, all that tells us is next time to try harder, to dig deeper.
We are obviously onto something - and that inspiration and drive will never end.

 

API Status

API access is available for the following (note: this is purely for uptime; no new API accounts are available):

  • < 2.1: inactive (all pre-2.1 API depreciated)
  • /2.1/auth: active.
  • /2.1/state/{stateval}: active
  • /2.1/city/{cityval}: active (note: accepts zip, common-name)
  • /2.1/venues/{venueval}: inactive (no longer supporting selection by venue)
  • /2.1/artists/{query}: inactive
  • /2.1/listing/send: active
  • /2.1/listing/update: active
  • /2.1/listing/all: active (note: auth tokens are not being regenerated)

Note on domain: API access is limited to the API service domains (not listed here).