Solstice Live, an Austin-based music promotion company, wants musicians all over town to fill out detailed profiles about their likes and needs. Although it operates like a dating website, Solstice Live isn’t actually meant for romance — the goal is to make a match bands and venues.

The four-month-old company, started by Matt Ford, aims to simplify how bands find venues to play and venues find bands to book with its website, solsticelive.com.

“There was a huge need for a really organized booking platform,” Ford said. “Booking can be a pretty crazy process on all levels of the local scene.”

The website allows bands and venues to sign up and create a profile showcasing music style or location details. When venues look for bands to play at a particular event, managers can search through the artists by genre to find a band with a sound that fits.

“The overall goal of this software is to create a clean and organized system for live-music booking, whether you’re a musician trying to get a gig or a venue trying to stay consistently booked,” Ford said.  

Artist relations director Lauren Bruno said she encourages bands big and small to create a Solstice Live profile. Bruno said company staffers will sit down with venue owners and band members to give personal demonstrations on how to use the website.

Adrian Tavares, chief technology officer of Solstice Live, said he believes the matching service might be useful in cities all around the world.

“We are a software company, but we are facilitating real-life experiences with something so impactful like live music,” Tavares said. “It’s very exciting to imagine taking what we have been able to do in our short time in Austin and multiplying across cities around the world.”

The company also books Solstice Live-sponsored events using its software. Ford said using their own website allows the programmers to improve the user experience.

“Using the software helps us discover 60–70 percent of the limitations before customers do,” Ford said.

Ford said they break their promotional efforts into two categories: regular booked shows and special events.

“Occasionally, we really put a lot of effort and attention into an event,” Ford said. “We’ll cherry-pick our favorite artists and really create an experience out of it.”Ford plans to spread Solstice Live beyond Austin in hopes that bands and venues from all over the country can make bookings through their site.

“The next step for [a band] is getting their first show in the cities around [them] and eventually going on tour,” Ford said.