Read to the end for an update on the site.
Updates here at Databruce tend to swing wildly between minor changes and parts of the site being entirely torn apart and rebuilt, with the occasional “oh shit” fix needed here and there.
Thankfully, this one is one of the former.
First, a quick note before getting underway:
The back half of June saw a drop in site performance due to having to switch from Supabase to a local database. Nothing was lost, but the local database was much slower. The switch was required due to a borked uptime monitor burning through the free tier limit in about 2 days. It has been fixed, and the site is once again back to Supabase, hopefully long term now. Although it did get me thinking about a few things regarding the site and it’s future which I cover in the conclusion of this post.
Changelog
- [User] Signup now requires answering a verification question.
- [Event Detail] Minor page redesign, header updated date/artist to be bigger size while shrinking venue/city. Very much inspired by WTED Archives.
- [Event Detail] New "Stats" tab. Show stats like venue/tour/tour leg/etc have been moved from overview sidebar to here. Stats tab layout inspired by speedrun.org.
- Box Office Data is now part of Databruce! This data was manually compiled from Billboard Magazine and Pollstar Magazine. Events now have how many tickets sold, min/max price, price range and promoter company. If an event is part of a "run", then the data is a aggregrate of all shows on the run. The data pulled gives info on shows from 1976 up through 2026. 2023-26 had to be pulled from "touringdata.org", and doesn't list ticket prices. Pre-1976 data doesn't seem to have been published anywhere.
- [Event Detail] Album cover images now show in-place of their names on the album breakdown. The list of songs will also show on hover as well. Clicking will still expand a list like before. Idea borrowed from Dripfield.pro.
- [Event Detail] Album breakdown now changes the progress bar color if the album is "complete" at a show. I couldn't have both the album image AND the complete badge without the layout breaking.
- [Event Detail] Updated "show times" card. This contains the scheduled time (from ticket stub), actual start/end time if known, and show length (dependent on the previous being present). Times were pulled from ticket stubs sourced from Brucebase, and are shown in venue local time. To speed up the process, AI was used to first OCR the stub images to extract the times. This data was then reviewed and corrected manually before being inserted into the database. The start/end time and length was pulled from Brucebase, who compiled the data from 2012-2025. 2026 shows were done by me as they occurred, using forum posts to determine the values.
Box Office Data
I broke this off into it’s own post as I wanted to elaborate but didn’t want to make this post super long. That post can be found here.
Redesigned Event Detail
For the fifth time (I think), the event detail page has gotten a minor face lift.
You’ll notice a few things hopefully, but lets go one by one.
Event Header
The event header has changed the size of the text, going with a bigger font for the date/artist, and a smaller one for venue/location. I think it looks better, and organizes the data visually in a way that makes more sense.
Sidebar
The event info card (which I may or may not have announced proper) was moved to a new tab. This reduces clutter on the main page.
Set Times
This card got a redesign, moving each item into a subcard. This organizes the info a bit nicer, and flows better on different screen sizes.
Album Breakdown
Next to the header, this got the most changes.
Gone are the album names, which in some cases had to be truncated to not throw the layout out of wack. They’ve been replaced by album cover images. Hovering over them will show the song list in a popup tooltip, although the lists can still be viewed by clicking on the row to expand the list.
The “complete” badge has been replaced by simply changing the color of the progress bar from blue to orange to indicate an album has been played in full at a show. The badge really didn’t gel with the album cover compared to the album name as text. I can’t say if this does either, but I think it looks better so it stays until I get the bug to change it again in a few months.
Stats Tab
All extended show info was moved to a new “stats” tab in the header. Things like number show at a venue/city, or the same stat on the tour/leg are all now combined in this new tab. Num show in an event run has also been added as well.
Box Office Data also resides here, as there wasn’t any room on the overview tab for it without overcrowding. If the data is an “aggregate” of all shows in a run, that is indicated below the value.
These same cards (minus the note listed above) have also been added to the Event Run detail page as well.
Set Times
This was added to the database in May, and originally had set times for 2012-2026. Partially from Brucebase, with 2026 tallied by yours truly as the shows happened.
Before 2012, I don’t know of anyone that would’ve been tracking when shows started/ended. Perhaps by digging through BTX/GL setlist threads this info could be acquired, but it is currently unknown. However, I did know of a source to at least partially expand this data.
While yes, very few if any would be tracking exact times. It is possible to compile the “scheduled” show times by checking old ticket stubs, which is what I did.
To avoid having to “break out” a second section of this into it’s own post, I’ll keep this brief.
Brucebase has a massive collection of ticket stub images, which was used as the source for this endeavor. These were first downloaded locally using a bulk download extension. To save a bit of time, I used a local AI model (Qwen 2.5b Vision) to OCR the stub images to extract the times and format as a spreadsheet. Since not every image could be read, and to ensure correctness, this data was reviewed and verified manually, cross referencing the original images when needed.
This means that well over 1,500 shows now have scheduled start times, roughly 1/3 of public ticketed events. The rest would require ticket stubs to be found, if they were given out at all. If you happen to have one of these, please get in touch.
Conclusion
Slightly shorter post this time around, probably because half of it I made it’s own post.
If you have any questions/comments/suggestions, please feel free to get in touch either via the contact form, on the various forums, or Discord. I don’t get a ton of feedback, so quite often it feels like developing in a vacuum. I only want the site to get better each month, and your feedback is crucial to that.
I want to thank Shawn Poole over at Letters To You for mentioning my site (pretty positively I might add) after I reached out concerning an error in a recent post of his. He didn’t have to do that, but I am thankful for it.
Before closing, I have one last thing to mention. After last month when the site was essentially brought to a crawl for a few weeks by the database limits being demolished in 2 days, I started thinking about the site in a new light.
As it stands, the site is hosted on a cheap VPS and is basically dependent on Supabase’s limited free tier to be somewhat reliable and performant. The VPS barely handles the site as-is, and for those 2-3 weeks having to also host the database made everything a bit more fragile. Depending on how this month goes (nearly at the tier limit), it might end up happening again, but hopefully this update can hold that off for a little bit.
The solution is obviously an upgrade to either the VPS or the database, but given that Databruce is a part-time free hobby, it is out of the question at the moment. Currently I fit in in-between my other projects and my main gig of selling wooden things I make in my shop.
I don’t want the above to seem like I don’t enjoy working on the site, I do. It’s just an attempt at explaining my current thoughts is all.
I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing some kind of tip jar/donation thing (probably Paypal as I have an account already). No clue if anything will come of this, and if anyone has thoughts do let me know.
Thanks for reading, Brian (July 6, 2026)