Ticketfly Performs Study About Phone Usage at Concerts

What’s worse than being surrounded by a bunch of people on their phones while you’re trying to enjoy a live show you paid a large chunk of cash for?

The fact that this is only the beginning and things will probably get worse in the near future.

Recently, Ticketfly performed a study on more than 2,000 concert-going adults aged 18 and older to see how audience members use their phones during a concert. Like you would probably guess, the results were a little depressing, showing that the social media generation is here to stay.

According to the results almost one-third (31 percent) of those surveyed admitted to being on their phones for at least half of the show or longer. In other words, for every three people in the crowd, one will be staring at a screen rather than the artist giving their soul on stage.

But if that wasn’t bad enough, in the Northeast region, five percent of those surveyed admitted to being on their phones for the entire show.

Yes, you read right; the ENTIRE show.

And they didn’t even survey tweens and teens.

Now, that’s really depressing.

The good thing, or at least our attempt at a silver-lining, is that not everyone on their phones are busy trying to keep up with the Joneses on Facebook (or any other social media account; we don’t discriminate).

The results show that 40 percent of females and 24 percent of males polled were using their phones to capture video and pictures of the show.

Understandable.

On the other hand, 60 percent of concert-goers were using their phones to look for deals on food and drinks and even artist merchandise. Twenty-three percent of audience members admitted to using their phones during a show to look up information about the artists performing right in front of them.

As Digital Music News pointed out, maybe it’s time for concert promoters to take advantage of this obsession with always being on phones.

The publication suggested that promoters could send out mass text messages to audience members informing them about merchandise deals and drink specials for the evening.

There was even a suggestion about allowing customers to purchase drinks and merchandise from their phones and have it delivered to them. Even though it sounds good in theory, I don’t think any bar employee or merch person would be willing to get punched and kicked in a pit to deliver a t-shirt to someone.

To see the complete results from the study, head on over to Ticketfly.

And remember, if you’re going to a concert and want to use your phone, exercise some concert etiquette.

Anberlin Asked About Cell Phones at Shows

We can all agree unanimously that cell phones have their place and time, but when you go to concert, doesn’t it get annoying, fast, when you have people (mostly “younger” audience members) watching the show completely through the screen on their telephones? Or worse, when they spend the vast majority of the time taking “selfies” with the stage and band in the background.

Now, we know some are saying “well then, don’t look!” but it’s kind of like going to watch a movie and seeing this bright light coming from someone around you in a dark theater who thinks they’re clever enough to put the display brightness down to zero.

As someone who is guilty of taking pictures at shows on their phone, we have to take some of the blame. Once upon a time, it was just cameras, but now things have gone beyond ridiculous with audience members bringing tablets and iPads to shows to film.

Considering that recently artists have been speaking out about this, just a few weeks ago at our stop on the Vans Warped Tour Yellowcard frontman, Ryan Key called out audience members who were in the pit with their cell phones out the entire time, unamused and yawning at the band’s fantastic performance. Key told them to either put the phones down and enjoy the show or to get out of the pit and let someone who wants to be there take their spot.

In a recent interview with Real Feels, fellow Warped Tour alum, Stephen Christian from Anberlin was asked about cell phones at shows and Christian made some valid points about his position on the matter.

Check out his interview below.