KOUEN tracks Japanese artists performing in the United States. Every night it downloads the full US concert catalog from the Ticketmaster Discovery Feed and cross-references every listed performer against MusicBrainz, the open music database, including Japanese-script names and known aliases. A second pass queries Ticketmaster directly for artists it already knows, which recovers listings the bulk feed files too sparsely to match on name alone.
The listing is rebuilt automatically every day at noon EST, so a show will appear here within 24 hours of being published. Because the Discovery feed includes events before tickets go on sale, some shows may be listed days in advance with a future on-sale date instead of a ticket link. Convention appearances are the one current exception, and are curated by hand; see below.
The primary evidence we use for determination is the Area that MusicBrainz assigns to the artist. Artists who listed as Japan are considered Japanese. This generally covers the obvious cases and some debatable ones, including: Japanese-born artists working abroad, international groups filed under Japan, and Japanese-language acts of other nationalities. Edge cases are decided by hand, case by case, and those decisions are visible in what appears here. If you think a call is wrong in either direction, please email me at [email protected].
Each show listing may carry one to a few small badges. They each answer a different question, and they only show up when there is something to say.
Rows marked unconfirmed matched by name, but the genre data was too thin to verify automatically. Most are real; a few are American acts sharing a name with an obscure Japanese one. Spot an impostor, or a real show that's missing? Report it and it gets fixed permanently.
Musical guests at anime and Japanese-culture conventions are curated by hand, because conventions announce lineups on their own sites and sell admission as a badge rather than a ticket per performance. Those appearances carry a convention badge and link to the event, not to a seat.
Every artist page offers a calendar subscription. Add it once and new dates arrive in your own calendar as they are announced, without checking back here. Artist pages also carry a short biography, a photo, and a Spotify player where one could be identified.
Coverage follows the Ticketmaster catalog, which is broad but not complete: independent venues ticketing entirely through other services are invisible to it. Some shows are listed but not sold by Ticketmaster; those are marked venue ticketed rather than hidden, since the listing still tells you the show exists. A show is filed under every performer Ticketmaster names on it, opening acts included, so an artist appears here only if the listing credits them.