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We're currently knee-deep in festival season, with an array of genre-blending, country music-fuelled extravaganzas punctuating virtually every weekend throughout July and August.
We all have that one concert or festival that we look forward to all year long. But then, even though we don't acknowledge it at first, something a little darker lurks beyond it.
Like a visit to the dentist or the annual rendezvous with that family member, all music-lovers dread the post-concert blues - that familiar feeling where the euphoria and freedom of screaming along to an artist you adore starts to fade, gradually replaced with the sinking realisation that all your evenings can't feel as electric as that.
Tryply, our new favourite app, is changing that — helping fans find live shows from artists they already love, or are likely to, based on what they listen to every day.
There are a few different objectives fuelling Tryply, but one key motivation is to enable fans to experience more live music. Whether you're combatting the post-concert blues or simply longing to feel that familiar buzz of the lights dimming and an artist striding onto the stage, Tryply is helping country music fans discover more shows.
As Brady, Tryply's co-founder, explains, the creation of the app was sparked from a personal need, “We travel quite often for work and pleasure, often to new locations. Most other apps or tour sites either just provide long laborious lists, or are only focused in specific cities or venues".
"We wanted to build an app that was visually pleasing and immediately intuitive," Brady continues. "giving inspiration for travel, connecting you to live music anywhere in the world you find yourself, helping you find your favorite artists or discovering new ones based on your preferences”.
Tryply eliminates the need to search for ‘Morgan Wallen tour dates’ and wrestle with confusing ticket sites. Instead, you can simply load up the Tryply app, search for one of your favourites, or perhaps broaden your horizons by taking a look through the ‘Similar Artists’ section and the Location-based list of nearby shows. Users can then easily find links to either Ticketmaster or StubHub to buy tickets.
Brady outlines how they use these platforms “for sourcing events and provide the user with convenient links from our app to the ticketing sites, and when they do purchase we can continue to improve our recommendation engine to match them with awesome shows”.
“Creating this level of accessibility and personalisation allows for us to not only readily match users with artists they know and love, but to introduce them to similar artists who they are sure to enjoy”, he expands.
Brady goes on to highlight how a key feature of Tryply is the way in which it encourages the discovery of new artists, “Considering that users listen to an average of 40 unique artists per week on streaming services, and each of those artists are similar to another 50 more artists, Tryply helps users connect to live shows for thousands of artists they are sure to love - any place, any time”.
The benefits to the user are evident - but there's another, potentially much more transformative element to this, particularly with regards to intimate, low-capacity venues.
It's no secret that these kinds of spaces have been struggling ever since the pandemic. In the UK in 2023, for instance, the Music Venue Trust (MVT) revealed that 123 grassroots venues had been shut down over the course of the year. At present, it is dishearteningly reported that two grassroots club venues close every month, while 43.8% of these grassroots venues made a loss in the past 12 months.
On the other side of The Pond, the picture doesn't look much brighter. A 2025 NIVA survey found that a staggering 64% of independent venues failed to make a profit last year.
Yet, conversely, the appetite for live music feels greater than ever, with modern-day titans continuing to obliterate venue attendance records, whether it's George Strait at Kyle Field, Zach Bryan at Ann Arbor or Morgan Wallen at Nissan Stadium.
Tryply is striving to form a new bridge between avid music aficionados and local, smaller venues. If you're a fan of Zach Bryan, for instance, but he doesn't have any shows lined up near you, Tryply integrates your Spotify usage and its ‘Similar Artists’ function to help you find a plethora of acts that might scratch that same itch in your brain for some deeply emotional, largely acoustic, country-infused folk.
By pointing users towards up-and-coming artists that might be playing around the corner from you, they are assisting both these hopeful musicians and the venues hosting them.
“The hope is to support smaller venues and artists”, Brady confirms, “Based on our recommendation engine and map-based interface, users can see where they are and readily use the ‘music near me’ quick search to discover artists and venues wherever they are, or search any locations (with date range filters) where they are going”.
We've been testing it out at Holler HQ, with one staff-member immediately discovering a nearby concert they'd like to attend, which they were previously unaware of. They gushed, “I loved how easy it was to sync it up to all the artists I listen to on Spotify and then all the recommendations for similar artists was spot on! I immediately found out about a gig I didn't know was happening. This is so cool”.
Another stressed, “It just makes sense. Streaming and social media platforms do a great job of suggesting new content you might like to engage with, and in a way, it seems Tryply is the live music equivalent of this. It points you towards shows and artists you might not know about, so you no longer feel like you have to fight to stay constantly ‘on the pulse’ of indie, underground gig recommendations”.
With a host of exciting tours either kicking off or extending this summer on both sides of the Atlantic - and further afield - and with this feeling like a pivotal moment for small venues, we can't wait see the impact Tryply will have from this day forward.
Download the Tryply App here and find your next country concert!
