If you’ve been to a concert in the past few years, there’s a good chance you’ve had to endure watching it through the 6-inch screen of a phone being held up by the person in front of you. What ever happened to the good ol’ days, when the show was the experience and our memories of it were considered good enough?
Performers have complained about it since the camera phone’s advent, and a company has been founded to combat it — Yondr, which partners with artists and promoters to establish phone-free events and spaces.
Attendees at Yondr-ful concerts put their phones in special pouches that can be carried around during the show, but automatically lock once they enter the “phone-free zone.” So concertgoers keep their phones; they just can’t use them during the show, and can “unlock” the case at any point by simply stepping outside of the “zone.”
The Lumineers are among the artists that have employed Yondr tech, starting with a string of shows leading up to the release of latest album Cleopatra in April; these shows featured material off Cleopatra, and the favorite folk-rock outfit wanted to avoid poor quality recordings of their songs hitting the internet before the album’s official release. It worked so well, lead singer Wesley Schultz even implemented a “no phone policy” at his wedding.
“It wasn’t because of any sort of a, ‘I don’t want photos of anyone at the wedding’ — it was more, we wanted people to be present,” said Schultz in an interview with NPR.
Beyoncé, She & Him and Adele have called out fans for phone use, and some comics have joined the offensive. ’Course, they’ve been making jabs at texters in the crowd forever, but the issue now stretches beyond lack of attentiveness — if a comic’s material leaks before they’re ready to record it, new bits could be ruined.
Stand-up giants like Louis C.K., Dave Chappelle and Hannibal Buress are among those who've started employing Yondr during their live performances. Chappelle, in particular, is an ambassador of the Yondr brand; he began using it last December when he toured across the country.
“If you haven’t been to a phone-free show, where there are 3,000 people and nobody on their phones, you feel the difference,” Yondr founder Graham Dugoni commented in a Buffalo News article about Chappelle’s performances. “You don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve been there.”
As guitarist for a number of Tampa Bay area bands, Clearwater musician Michael Rende seems to think that local artists have a different opinion on the matter. “While it can be pretty annoying if your audience is texting during a set,” he said in a recent phone interview, “it can get you some pretty good exposure if someone shares a recording they took of you at your concert.”
Michael Fritz, Jr. is a sophomore at the University of Tampa, where he's studying writing and economics.
This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 4, 2016.