Know the lineup and the lyrics at festivals

Visitors to music festivals like Lollapalooza or Pitchfork often have three goals: enjoying great live music, having fun with friends and staying safe and secure. In a crowd of thousands, this can be difficult, but there are plenty of apps that can help.

Planning which performers you would like to see at a festival can be a big help, and Any.do is a great way to do this. Essentially a to-do list, it is free for iOS and Android and includes timed reminders and alerts to help you remember to go to a particular stage to see a particular artist.

Its clean and simple interface is pretty easy to learn, and it has sharing options so you can send your plans to any friends joining you at the festival. Any.do has a lot of menus and options, so it is worth familiarising yourself with it ahead of time, but the complexity allows the app to be useful in places other than music festivals.

Another helpful app is Songkick Concerts, which shows the acts appearing at festivals long before the event happens. The app, free on iOS, scans your music library to learn which performers you like. It then sends alerts if any of them will be playing soon or nearby.

Songkick lets you see the full lineup of bands at festivals, and it has other information like venue maps. It also has an option to buy tickets. Great to look at and easy to navigate, Songkick is also available on Android, where it looks similar and works the same way. It scans your Google Music, Last.fm and other accounts to learn your music tastes.

Don’t forget about song lyrics - you don’t want to find yourself in the crowd humming along to a rock anthem when you don’t know the words. Musixmatch can help. Musixmatch connects to music played on your phone and displays synchronized lyrics so you can learn the words before you get to the festival.

You can also search for lyrics, and the app can listen to the music being played around you and match the lyrics to the music it identifies. This feature may work when you are in a crowd listening to a live performance, but the results may be unreliable. On iOS, the app has an Apple Watch extension so you can see the lyrics on your wrist.

Musixmatch is free on iOS and Android, but to remove in-app ads and have access to the full range of features, you have to pay $5 (Rs 317) a year.

For identifying music you’re not familiar with, consider Soundhound. It works a lot like its main rival, Shazam, comparing music against its database to come up with an identification. But unlike Shazam, Soundhound can identify music if you hum it or even, if you are lucky, if it is being performed live. The app is easy to use and feels a little magical when it works. It’s free on iOS and Android.

Meeting up with friends can be tricky at a festival, so to avoid a long string of instant messages, try Apple’s built-in Find My Friends app, which can locate fellow Apple users through their phones’ GPS services. You can even set up temporary sharing so your personal location is shared only during a festival. The free Locate My Friends app on Android is similar, but if you use it, keep in mind that your location info will be shared with a third party that is not Google. Remember, too, to check the festival’s official app - many are high quality and have useful features specific to each location.