Our Guide To Smartphone Etiquette At Live Music Events
Our Purple Sneakers guide to smartphone etiquette at live music events. Is Google Glass the next fronteer for the erosion of your live music experience?
Have you ever had your enjoyment of a live show diminished due to the inconsiderate tall guy in front of you filming half of the show? You went to see the performance in it's physicality, not through the shitty screen of another's mobile. Here's our guide to Smarphone Etiquette at live events.
If you are that tall guy, you may be a fan of the band, but the audience is definitely not a fan of you because basically, you're spoiling the experience of fellow gig-goers through your inappropriate device usage and quite frankly, that's offensive to not only the audience, but also the members of the band.
Now I'm not saying that I'm innocent in all of this, my device's camera album is inundated with physical memories of gigs that I've attended. “Just wait for the professional photographers to upload them”, they'd say, “See if it goes up on Moshcam”.. But I won't have it. I need a fuzzy, deformed photograph of the musicians I watch from the exact spot that I stand in. Let me take my 30 second video of the amps breaking my phone's mic, soon to blow its speakers from the distorted noise it blares at me.
Why do we do it? But more importantly, how is our behaviour inappropriate?
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Consider the artists. They haven't ventured all of this way to watch their fans turn into a room of paparazzi. They want to be able to see you properly; your emotional responses to their music. Not a black rectangle covering up the excitement and appreciation that paints the face of a person. If this is what they wanted of a show they may as well have just saved their effort by posting an online stream of a studio recording.
This topic can be easily argued, and it's understandable. Although some artists will view this as a form of flattery, many others deem it rather rude. There's been shows in the past where musicians have politely requested that no recording devices are to reveal themselves during their performance (unless you're the holder of a media pass of course). You may not realise it, but once this simple command has been abused, people get upset at the narcissistic being you've so ignorantly become.
Take Jack White for example, during his Blunderbuss tour last year, his one wish was that all “cell phones” were to be switched off and buried in your pocket, if that. This was clearly communicated, such as the sign you would have seen stuck up on the door of Melbourne's Festival Hall. From an artist's point of view, he stated, “The gadgetry for the experience of a live show has gotten ridiculous. You look out and see a sea of blue screens.”
He reinforced this with, “The worst thing is to watch a young kid watching a show on their camera screen, instead of watching it on stage. You just want to take it out of his hand and go, 'Come on man, that's not what this is about.”
And he's right. It's a known aspect to a musician's career that live performance is an indescribable treasure. To have that interrupted by an abundance of fans reaching for their recording devices, fretting to get the right shot at an artist's show is offensive; as materialism is getting in the way of what was intended to be a special moment between musician/band and audience. The ticket you purchased was for you, not a piece of technology that builds up a wall that was never supposed to be there.
If you're still sitting there and questioning how this is offensive, gain an idea by the hints of the music industry who are providing more ideas and resources to avoid such usage at a live show.
Extremely recently, we've been given news that Alt-J are to help launch a brand new live music app called soundhalo. It's where you can stream the live show of a gig as it happens on your smart phone for those unable to attend the show. It's different from other music hosts such as Spotify in that it not only offers live streaming, the content can be purchased and downloaded straight to your phone as soon as the desired content exists. This includes spontaneous set list features such as bands covering songs outside of their discography, playing really long versions of tracks or simply just owning a copy of the entire performance from start to finish.
With all of this in mind, soundhalo hopes to see the trend of using your mobile phone to capture moments at a live show slowly but surely diminish, which will simultaneously respect the wishes of the artists who simply want to celebrate their music with nothing but your utter attention. While they take care of the memories and idiosyncrasies of a particular set, the attendees are to do nothing but enjoy the performance without worrying about their own documentation of the show.
But of course, technology isn't one sided. Through the evolution of Google Glass [the wearable computer that looks like a pair of futuristic glasses with no lenses], we fall back to square one. Glassies (let's call them that) can wear these funny looking specs anywhere, and have the ability to document what they see from eye level. Although the amount of Glassies is very minimal, the $1500 product is sure to eventually reach the hands of many, which may see quite a few Glassies at a live music show. This takes us back to the accessibility of documenting live footage of a show.
Although this isn't as physically distracting as holding your arms straight above your head, transfixing your index finger to the capture button, you're still focusing on taking the right shot rather than enjoying the show before you. So yes, whether you may think that this is acceptable, it still goes completely against the wishes of the artists you are viewing before you, therefore is extremely offensive to their performance and wishes. It's not like Google Glass was created for this purpose!
So do yourself and those around you a tremendous favour by keeping your personal recording devices in your pockets. Not only does this benefit your own experience of the show, you're paying huge respect to the hard-working artists you've come to see.
Words by Hannah Galvin
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