How to remember every concert you've been to

Nobody forgets their first gig. It's the fortieth, the hundredth, and all the Tuesday nights in between that slip away. A few things work against you:

• Volume. Go to a couple of shows a month and that's well over two hundred in a decade. Memory keeps the standouts and quietly drops the rest.
• Support acts. You might remember the headliner, but the two bands on before them rarely stick, even when one of them went on to become a favourite.
• Years blur together. Seeing the same band on three different tours makes it hard to say which venue was which, or whether that great night was 2016 or 2019.
• Festivals compress everything. A three-day weekend might include twenty sets, and most of them merge into one muddy memory.
• The evidence is scattered. Tickets are in one inbox, photos in another app, stubs in a drawer and the setlist nowhere at all.

The good news is that most of that evidence still exists. You just need to gather it in a sensible order.

1. Your email inbox

If you bought tickets online, there's almost always a confirmation email. Search for the names of the ticket sellers you've used. In the UK the common ones include Ticketmaster, See Tickets, Gigantic, Skiddle, AXS, Dice and Eventim, plus individual venues and promoters that sell their own tickets. Then try generic phrases that turn up in most confirmations:

• "e-ticket" and "your tickets"
• "order confirmation" and "booking confirmation"
• "doors open" and "admit one"
• "event reminder" and "know before you go"

In Gmail and Outlook you can narrow things down with search operators, for example from:ticketmaster or subject:"order confirmation". Gmail also understands before: and after: with a date, which is handy for working through one year at a time. Check spam, archive and promotions folders too, because confirmations often end up there.

Note that the email date is when you bought the ticket, which can be months before the gig. The event date is usually in the body of the email or on the attached ticket.

2. Ticket seller accounts

If you've deleted the emails, log into your accounts with the sellers above. Many show past orders, though how far back they go varies. While you're there, it's worth checking any app-only tickets on your phone, as some sellers deliver tickets inside their own app rather than by email.

3. Bank and card statements

Search your banking app for the ticket seller names, venue names and words like "tickets" or "box office". This catches gigs booked on an email address you no longer use, and tickets paid for by card at the door. Many banking apps only let you search back a limited number of years; older statements can usually be requested from your bank. PayPal's activity history is worth checking too if you ever paid for tickets that way.

4. Social media posts and memories

Scroll back through your own posts on Facebook, Instagram, X or wherever you shared things at the time. Look for check-ins at venues, blurry stage photos and "who's going?" posts. Facebook's Memories surfaces old posts on each date, and most platforms let you download a copy of your data, which you can search for venue names in one go. Events you marked as "going" are another useful clue, but treat them as possibles rather than proof.

5. Setlist.fm

Setlist.fm is a public database of setlists that you can search by artist, venue and date. It's the best way to turn "I saw them at the Academy around 2014" into an exact date. Search the artist, scan their past shows for the venue and city you remember, and open the setlist: if the songs match what you remember hearing, you've probably found your gig. Listings often include the other acts on the bill, which is how many people recover support bands they'd completely forgotten. If you sign up, you can also mark the shows you attended. Coverage is strong for touring bands and patchier for small local nights, so don't worry if a show isn't listed.

6. Physical stubs, wristbands and merch

Check drawers, old wallets, scrapbooks and that box in the loft. Paper stubs usually show the date, venue and price. Festival wristbands often carry the year. Tour T-shirts with dates printed on the back can confirm which tour you saw, and old diaries or wall calendars sometimes hold the rest.

7. Friends who were there

Once your list is in decent shape, share it with the people you usually go to gigs with. They'll fill gaps from their own emails and photos, and they're great at remembering the nights you'd rather forget.

Gigs that are easiest to miss

When you think you're done, run through this list once more:

• Shows where a friend bought the tickets, so there's no email or payment in your name
• Free gigs, in-store sessions and pub shows with no ticket at all
• Local bands, Battle of the Bands nights and open mics
• Every individual band you saw at a festival, not just the festival itself
• Support acts who are now headlining in their own right

A list of band names is a start, but a record you'll actually enjoy looking back on needs a bit more. For every show, aim to capture:

• Date. The anchor for everything else, and the thing that makes "on this day" throwbacks possible.
• Headliner. Who you went to see.
• Support acts. The detail people regret not writing down most often.
• Tour name. Useful when you've seen the same band several times.
• Venue and city. Including the room, if the venue has more than one.
• Ticket price. Interesting later, especially when you compare prices across the years.
• Your rating. A quick score out of five or ten tells future you which nights were special.
• Who you went with. Often the part of the memory that matters most.
• Photos and videos. A handful of the best, not all two hundred.
• Setlist. Or a link to it, so you can relive the night song by song.

For past gigs you're rebuilding, don't let missing details stop you logging the show. A date, a band and a venue are enough to start; you can add the rest as you find it.

Rebuilding your history is a one-off job. Keeping it complete is about habit, and the habit is simple: log the gig on the night or the next morning. Do it on the train home, in the queue for the cloakroom, or with a coffee the day after. Support act names, the setlist and how you felt about it are the first things to fade, so capture them while they're fresh.

Make it one place, not five

The reason gigs get lost is that the details end up scattered. A spreadsheet works if you're disciplined, but it won't hold your photos or videos. That's the gap StubStash was built to fill. It's a free Android app that works as your personal live music archive:

• Concerts: log headliners, support acts, tour titles, venues, dates, ticket prices and your rating, then attach photos, videos and a Setlist.fm link.
• Festivals: track multi-day festivals with daily headliners, undercards and ticket prices, grouped by year with day-by-day lineup tags. More on that in the festival tracker guide.
• Battle of the Bands: log each round, the competing acts, guest headliners and who you voted for, so local nights don't slip through the cracks.
• Venue and artist directories: A to Z indexes of every venue you've been to and every band you've seen live, showing when, where and how many times.

Let the past come back to you

With StubStash Pro, an optional in-app upgrade, the On This Day nostalgia feed shows what you were watching on today's date in previous years. Pro also adds personal analytics such as average ticket price and your most-seen artists (see concert stats) and removes ads.

A routine that sticks

1. Add upcoming gigs as soon as you buy the tickets.
2. On the night, take a few photos and note the support acts.
3. Next morning, add your rating, the ticket price and the Setlist.fm link.
4. Pick your best two or three photos or videos and attach them.
5. Once a year, look back through your venue and artist lists and enjoy how far you've come.