Discover new music and events with The Underground
Too Many Plans, Not Enough Time
Team Member: Joe Parisia Advancing Computer Science (ACS), Artificial Intelligence (AI)
It’s Saturday night and you don’t have plans. You and your friends love live music but are overwhelmed with options… and can’t agree on which event, venue or even band will be the most fun. The solution? The Underground.
The Underground is a mobile app that uses your location to recommend venues and events near you and suggest new bands based on what you already like. With the sheer number of social media platforms, it’s hard to decide where to go when looking for shows, especially when so many events are constantly thrown in your face. Created by Joe Parisia, an ACS and AI major, the idea for the app started in order to fulfill his own needs.
“I wanted a way for people to find something they’d already like without having to go through and listen to a bunch of bands they haven’t heard of before just to find something they’d like to go to.”
New users are prompted to enter a handful of their favorite bands, which are added to a database when first signing into the app. Similar to how Amazon recommends new products, the app uses a collaborative filtering algorithm to suggest bands and new events you might like based on the database of your unique music tastes. The app relies on Google Maps for location to recommend venues near you. The Underground takes the hard part out of finding what you want to do on any given night by presenting you with options.
From Real-World Problem to Student Project
Joe was initially having a hard time brainstorming an idea for his Student Innovation Project (SIP), then the real-world scenario that inspired the app happened. Invited to a bunch of events with only time to attend one, Joe decided to make an app that would make the call for him.
When initially diving into the project, it was a completely different app. Over time, the app was slowly molded into what it is today by showing the app to bandmates and friends at shows, who offered valuable recommendations and insights into actual use cases.
There are many resources for popular mainstream bands, but it’s harder for smaller bands to get noticed, even when they’re really talented. While the app changed, Joe’s goals for the project never did, which were “to really bring smaller, local acts to the light and enable people to find them without cycling through an endless number of other bands.”
As a band member of TV TRAGEDY, Joe already had a lot of material for the app. “It’s just one of my passions. It helped the whole process because it’s something I really care about and have been involved with for a long time. Instead of building an app that I don’t have a connection to, I’d say my band is probably the main reason I kept going with the concept of The Underground instead of pursuing something else.”
Local to the Phoenix area, Joe plays guitar for TV TRAGEDY, a ‘90s-style punk band that plays faster, heavier music. Going on 10 years of being in a band, they have a new lineup of bandmates consisting of five members.
“We’ve been playing out of town all year, we haven’t played in town yet, about 12-13 shows so far. We already have a couple more mini tours that are being booked right now. It’s been pretty fun!”
Joe enlisted a couple professors to help with coding issues, and he also had help from another UAT student, Michael Hinsberger (ACS), who assisted in ironing out the recommendation system. Joe states, “Fun fact, I never touched any programming before coming to UAT. I always just played around on computers, like in the Myspace days with HTML. I learned everything for this app here, except for Photoshop skills. I made all the assets on the app.”
Now that his SIP is completed, Joe is looking for help finishing the app to bring it to market. Up until this point, the project has been running locally on Joe’s personal computer, but it’s now at the point where dedicated servers are needed. “I would love for the app to be released and utilized by anyone.”
As a recent graduate of UAT, Joe has community aspirations, “I want to find a job where I can use my skills to help people, I’ve always liked volunteering whenever I can. And to use my skills to create apps or programs to help the community, that’s always been the end goal.”
Collaborators:
Micheal Hinsberger, Advancing Computer Science
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