In this series, our editors Ali and Gabi take a look at the week’s main talking points in music and pop culture. An edited version of the near-constant dialogue they have over text and voice notes, “We Listen & We Judge” features strong opinions but also very strong love for all things music. This time they talk about the use of phones during concerts and artists trying to ban them from their shows, like Fred again on his current “USB002 – Tour”. To film or not to film….?
Ali: That is the question… that divides lots of gig lovers. Should people be allowed to use their phone during a concert, to take photos or videos? For a while, clubs have been banning phones and now we’re seeing this happen at other types of show. Gabi, you recently saw Fred again on his current USB002 tour, no phones allowed! How was it?
Gabi: Let’s say it was an ambitious try, especially for a show of that size. They used stickers to put over the phone cameras, like it’s common in most Berlin clubs. Before the show even started, the woman next to me said to me: “But what is the point? It’s just a sticker, I can just peel it off, right?” Well, yeah, you can! And she did! She started taking videos about half an hour into the show.
In clubs, it’s more a matter of honour, a code of conduct. You just don’t film in clubs, and the stickers are a gentle reminder not to do so. But also, clubs are a smaller environment than a gig with a 15.000 people crowd. At a club like Berghain for example, people suggest that you don’t even take your phone ouf your bag, so you’re not suspected of filming. Otherwise you’re out of there in no time. To enforce it like that at an event of that size just isn’t possible, is it?
Ali: I agree – it was an ambitious ask!
Gabi: Well, either I am a faithful club goer or an obedient German…
Ali: You Germans are obsessed with rules!
Gabi: Evidently! I left my phone in my bag and the stickers on top of my camera the whole show. I was all the way at the front and to be honest, I would have loved to have a couple of videos from that perspective. But I didn’t even think about it during the show. I did expect some people not to respect it and start filming, but when I looked around towards the end of the show, I was surprised to see that at least half of the crowd were filming. It made me a bit sad. They sent out an email the day before the show, explaining why filming wasn’t allowed – to make people feel more in the moment. It just made me sad that an artist made this heartfelt, beautiful offer to their audience and people didn’t respect it.
Ali: You were in Scotland, my home country, where I have to say the attitude is more: “Don’t get caught!” But I’ve absorbed the Danish ways over the past two years, since moving here, and I think I would have been the same as you and done what I was told! Plus I think to lose yourself in the moment is very liberating. We had the opposite experience when we saw Fred in Rome last month and some girl in front of me spent a lot of the show either posing for selfies, posing for photos with her friend, being filmed by her friend or getting another friend who wasn’t at the show on FaceTime during it! All this drives me crazy and I do see why artists like Fred want to ban phones. There is a huge difference between taking a few short videos for memories, which I do, and turning the show into your own private party where your phone invades others’ space right?
Gabi: Totally agree. I think there is a big difference between taking a couple of photos and videos of the artist and generating massive content for elaborate TikTok videos, which are more about you being at the show than the show itself. I witnessed that for the first time when I saw Olivia Rodrigo last year and suddenly during one song a whole group of young people jumped up and got in line to perform a full choreographed routine, wearing matching shirts, all filmed by two people from different angles with their phone torches on. I was like wow, that’s new! I mean, cute, have fun. But also it was a bit distracting. And I felt like this was the actual highlight of the show for them. They must have practiced their stunt for quite a while. Did they actually enjoy the show? Or did they wait the whole time for that specific song to come on?
Ali: People have become so used to performing constantly for social media that it’s like they can’t stop the compulsion to do that. I want to say, Sit down and be quiet! Or at least, you don’t have to be quiet but it’s not you giving the show! And it is incredibly disruptive for others in the audience.
Gabi: I feel that as with everything, you need to differentiate. People who complain about filming at shows often say that it’s not worth it, because you will never look at those videos again. I know that for you and me, that’s definitely not true. I come back to my favourite concert videos a lot. And even though we’ve both seen each other’s videos, we often end up sending them to each other again, to talk about and remember certain moments. And I don’t think that filming at a show automatically means you’re not in the moment. I like to take a couple of videos, but most of the time I’m just enjoying the show. I will never understand how someone can film a complete show or stream it live via their socials. And yes, this is definitely a thing!
Ali: I agree: you can film short sections of a show and still be in the moment. And enjoy those videos long afterwards as a keepsake. Filming or, worse, livestreaming a whole show – I just don’t get it. The livestreaming is a really interesting one. There was a lot of that on the last 1975 tour in 2023-24. One fan or other would livestream every single show. A group of fans even turned it into a charity project. I didn’t watch any of those livestreams because for me it was a bit of a dead experience. If I couldn’t be there I didn’t want to watch it through someone else’s phone, where the sound is terrible and connection glitches every few minutes. But it made me think, does the artist actually want their show to be livestreamed so that some of the surprise element is actually ruined for fans coming to future shows? Do I have a right, as a music lover, to be able to watch every show via live link-up because I can’t be there in person? Do fans have the right, without question, to live-stream from an event?
Again, it’s potentially disruptive. It makes me think of people facetime-ing their friends from shows, and while I’m trying to watch I’m forced to look at the face of someone, who isn’t even in the room, on a screen right in front of me! I find that actually really selfish, though I think fans who do the livestreaming probably see themselves as providing some kind of public service! You could see that with The 1975 fans that livestreamed to raise money for charity. But unless artists put up boundaries, as Fred is clearly trying to do, people don’t always think about what is reasonable and what’s not. They only consider their own needs and wants.
Gabi: I totally agree with you about the live streaming. I found it really irritating. With some fans who did it regularly I was wondering whether they really were there for the sake of their own experience or mostly for the props they got from the fan community. I know for sure I couldn’t enjoy a concert while constantly holding my phone and trying not to move too much to not shake the picture! Some people deliberately used it to grow their follower counts on social media. I don’t know. Maybe that makes me sound old, but my overall stance is: if you pay money to go to a show and spend hours queuing to be at the front, you should do it for yourself and your own experience and nothing and nobody else.
Ali: One hundred per cent.
Gabi: In 2018, during his Boarding House Reach Tour, Jack White banned phones from his concerts completely, by locking them into so-called Yondr Pouches. You had your phone with you the whole time, but in these pouches, which were magnetically locked and could only be unlocked outside the venue at certain access points. And I have to say – these were some of the most intense crowds I’ve ever been in. People went wild! Hands in the air, jumping, clapping and dancing the whole time. And also I met so many people at those shows, because you couldn’t play around with your phone until it started – people actually talked to each other! It was a very special experience.
Ali: That’s interesting that people just went with it, I guess because they had no choice? They couldn’t unlock the pouch. Whereas Fred used stickers and people didn’t respect it and took them off. How many people were in the Jack crowd? Is that system replicable with a crowd of maybe 20,000?
Gabi: No, I don’t think it is. Those were 5,000 max capacity shows. I heard that the system was originally developed for big comedy shows, to create a safe space for comedians to try out new material and prevent it from leaking. It must be quite an extra production expense, as you need quite a lot of staff to handle it. Jack White stopped using the pouches on his recent tour. I’m wondering whether he just gave in or if it was too expensive. Or – hot take – if he felt like the free promo generated by people putting material of his live show on socials actually isn’t such a bad thing? The 1975 gained a lot of new fans when in 2023 they suddenly turned into a TikTok phenomenon, didn’t they?
Ali: They did, but I’m not sure that was a good thing. It seemed to become quite toxic for Matty Healy as frontman because he felt so much pressure to constantly react and change up the show to keep it fresh. Towards the very end of the tour during the run of shows we went to together, I did feel a bit like I was watching him have a social media-inflicted mental breakdown in real time. He has talked a bit about that since, on the Doomscroll Podcast. I’m sure for some people, it made fabulous entertainment. It was never entirely certain what was a brilliant performance and what was genuine mental health concern, but I remember finding it pretty disturbing.
But I also felt it was creating a toxic undercurrent amongst fans as well. People started competing for whose show was the best show, who got the best setlist, who got the most crowd interaction from the band, who got the eye contact from Matty, who was closest to the front, even who was getting to go to the most shows. The answer is always going to be: Not you. Unless you are that woman who literally went to every single show. So some people, especially younger fans who are usually more online and can probably afford to go to fewer shows, had this real sense of FOMO all the time and this simultaneous compulsion to keep watching the livestreams. And the reality is without the livestreams and the constant TikTok videos clipped from the livestreams, nobody would have known what they were missing out on. I strongly believe we are actually not meant to have all this endless content. And that brings us back full circle to the rights we have when it comes to phones, and the responsibilities.
Gabi: As for Fred’s current USB tour – I’m a bit torn about the no phones policy. I would absolutely love to be in an all dancing and vibing crowd like in a club for those shows. But I don’t think it will work. In Brussels, one week after the first show in Glasgow, apparently people in the crowd almost got into fights about the filming. These are simply not club shows – Fred is a huge artist and people from all over the world come to see him. Some of them have been waiting for this moment for years, some might never get the chance to see him again. I kind of understand that people want a memory of that moment. And to be honest, I’d rather have people around me filming than getting into fights over said filming.
I totally see where he is coming from. He wants the club feeling, the rave momentum. But sadly I think he’s become too big for that and maybe he just needs to accept it. The energy was still amazing, despite some people filming. If I’m being honest, I actually almost regret being so obedient. I do wish I had some videos of that show! But on the other hand, those moments still live rent free in my mind. And that’s what it’s all about in the end, isn’t it? What I find hilarious though is that people on the internet are actively looking for those phone stickers as memorabilia, lol. Seems to be good for something at least!
Ali: Honestly! Well, the most legendary gig I ever went to was Prince in 2008 at the O2 in London, my all time favourite artist. And I have no videos of that, obviously, but I still remember it really vividly. You must be the same, as a fellow Prince devotee! If Prince was still alive and performing, I reckon he would have actually taken the phones from everyone and locked them up! Or just forced everyone to keep them hidden with the sheer force of his personality! He wouldn’t have fucked with stickers! Or livestreaming gigs! He would have said live in the moment, wouldn’t he?
Gabi: Prince had this incredible sense of natural authority, didn’t he? If Prince says it, you do it! I remember the last time I saw him in 2010, there was an announcement before he came on that Prince would appreciate it if people refrained from filming or taking photos. It was a time before filming at shows became massive, but it was still an option. Yet there wasn’t a single phone in sight. My friend took one single sneaky photo of him though, and I still have it and hold it very dear. I didn’t think for a second that night it would be the last time I got to see him.
Ali: We need to bring Prince’s spirit back. He was all about the music, and that’s what the experience of a show should fundamentally be about. Everything else is secondary.
