The smartphone giveth, and the smartphone taketh away. The proliferation of video cameras in connected phones was a boon to the music industry, which early on saw it as a replacement for MTV, a way to put artist clips in front of every Facebook and Instagram user on earth and stimulate ticket sales. But as smartphone proliferated, those clips became more like leaks in a boat than floats for it. Besides, artists were noticing that concertgoers were standing or sitting in front of them but staring into their phones instead of the stage. Talk about an ego deflater. Richard Branson, the Virgin impresario, has criticized contemporary music shows as “soulless,” where “everyone stands around looking at their phones.”
Performers began fighting back a few years ago. In 2013, Bruno Mars yelled at fans from the stage of the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, scolding them, “Put your damn phones down!” Cyndi Lauper did the same on her She’s So Unusual 30th anniversary tour. “If you’re looking through the phone at me and not joining in this thing we’re sharing, you’re missing out,” she told the New York Daily News in July that year. Adele, last year’s biggest-selling artist, singled out one culprit in the crowd in Verona, Italy saying, “Yeah, I want to tell that lady… can you stop filming me with a video camera because I’m really here in real life…. You can enjoy it in real life, rather than through your camera.” Slipknot’s lead singer Corey Taylor was more characteristically aggressive, pouring entire bottles of water on phones or knocking them out of the hands of those unfortunate to be within his reach at shows. (Videos of which are promptly shared on Vimeo.) Others, including Neko Case, Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Eminem, have made similar exhortations, with varying levels of intensity and language used.
It’s funny, and it’s not. Artists are reluctant to try out new material, fearing that clips of it could turn off fans or cut into ticket sales. And the audio and video quality of what’s captured on mobile devices is notoriously terrible, with audio distortion and alcohol-fueled camera techniques more than offsetting any authenticity this kind of captured content connotes. Having your “fans” spend most of a show looking at you through a lens is just plain insulting, or worse — texting away, oblivious to the fact that there’s a show on.
Over Yondr
Artists are beginning to do more than chide fans from the stage. Alicia Keys and others have resorted to a gadget called the Yondr (overyondr.com), a form-fitting case that their phone slides into, distributed at the venue entry points. The case locks when the user enters the designated phone-free zone at the venue. Event goers can keep their phones on them, but they won’t be able to use them, text or snap photos while in the designated “phone-free zone” at venues. If they want to use their phone at all, they’ll need to step outside the zone and tap the case on an electronic unlocking mechanism by the door. Once they come back inside, the case will lock again. Sure, you could smuggle a phone in, but if you’re caught using it inside during the show, you’re 86-ed. It could also offer phone users as much benefit as it does the performers — Yondr’s inventor says he got the idea in part after watching crowds take videos of a drunk person dancing and then posting those to social media sites. Alicia Keys, the Lumineers and comedian Louis CK have all used Yondr, as have a number of venues.
Other Solutions
The problem is widespread enough to have prompted a number of other possible solutions. Apple has reportedly filed a patent for a mechanism that, using an infrared signal, can disable certain recording functions within a specific radius. According to the patent filing, video capabilities would only be disabled if the phone is pointed in a certain direction; users would be still able to take photos of their friends in the crowd, but their camera would switch off if they point it at the stage. This could help stem the problem amongst millennials, 31 percent of whom a Harris poll last year determined will use their phones at shows. (If only they could adapt it to people who yell “Freebird!” That would help especially at the Jimmy Buffett and classic rock shows frequented by boomers, who seem as addicted to the use of cellphones at shows as their grandkids. God help us if they put a video camera in the Jitterbug flip phones advertised in AARP The Magazine.)
Professional Observations
FOH mixers have their own take on the issue. Brett “Scoop” Blanden (Lady Antebellum) eyes cell towers at big shows with annoyance, suspecting them of inducing HF noise in RF-sensitive gear like single-coil pickups as well as encouraging use of mobile devices. Others, like Ken “Pooch” Van Druten (Linkin Park) see phones at concerts as an inevitable part of the future. “I think that watching a concert through your phone is the concert experience of today, and we should embrace it,” he said in an email. “It’s a way for people to share their experience and still be immersed in the live event. I have no problem with everyone filming shows. I think it is the new normal.”
It’s a complex issue. It’s economic: recordings of shows shared online do cut into ticket sales, and poor recordings reflect negatively on the artist and those around them. And it’s personal: it’s always been a business of egos, and to show up ostensibly to listen to someone’s music but instead keep your mug glued to a glowing screen, or “watching” the entire show through that screen, is insulting. The question is, will artists experience blowback from fans who see technological or rule-based restrictions on their phones — which have arguably become the single most critical peripheral in our lives — as an affront to them personally?
The simple answer is, of course, “modern problems” — this was not an issue for Sinatra or the Beatles (whose big problem was being blinded by flashbulbs and hit by tossed jellybeans). But it is a real problem, modern or otherwise. The cognitive dissociation that arises from placing devices between audience members and the event on stage could ultimately lead to a very real disconnect, one that opens the door further for live-streaming of concerts, which might be our future anyway but which might also stifle the only thing that’s come close to replacing the lost revenues of recorded music. Artists with what we’ll call “reasonable” fan bases can appeal to their higher instincts, as they sit in a City Winery; artists with, let’s say, less reasonable fan cohorts, like at a Kenny Chesney concert, might look to more stringent measures. (Of course, certain audiences tend to return fire when annoyed.) But let’s face it: at the end of the day, you probably can’t stop someone from yelling “Freebird” in a crowded theater.
