Concert Culture

Has concert culture really changed for the worse, or is it us that needs to change for the better?

AUDREY NOTSCH

Music seems to be the lifeblood of modern popular culture—there is nobody more culturally relevant than the “music star,” thanks to the internet. A direct product of this is the increasing popularity of concerts and live music; because the internet has the ability for these artists’ music to reach innumerable amounts of people, it can seem like everyone wants a chance at attending one of their concerts. With more and more people attending or wanting to attend concerts, the state of concert culture has shifted towards commodification, technology, and profit.

One of the ways that concert culture has changed is through ticket pricing and tickets being sold primarily online. Because tickets are in higher demand due to popularity, ticket agencies jack up the prices to gain profit.

A few years ago I was rifling through my parents’ old CD collection, looking for nothing in particular, when I found a Metallica CD with concert tickets in the back of the case. It was from 1997 at Target Field, and it was $28.50 for one ticket. I was, admittedly, quite surprised to see it at such a low price. Buying a ticket for ONLY that much is literally unheard of in today’s ticket market. But I feel like this just goes to show how out-of-hand the culture surrounding the price of concerts has become; in order to get a ticket to an artist you love, especially if they’re popular, you have to, a) sign up for the presale tickets and hope you made it in time to grab one; b) if you’re one of those unlucky people who didn’t make the presale, you have to wait in a long online queue for the regular tickets; or c) hope you get some before they sell out, or then have to resort to buying an insanely expensive reseller ticket.

The way in which we have to buy tickets now and the culture that surrounds ticket pricing has created a system that is extremely inaccessible for people who want to watch live music. It has also created a culture that lacks concert etiquette. Ocean Elder, a 21-year-old from Northeast Minneapolis, commented on how ticket prices have fed the ever-changing concert culture.

“It’s definitely way too expensive,” Elder said, “People who have been going to shows for years understand how to act in a crowd, but if they can’t afford to go to anymore, the only people going to concerts are those who don’t understand proper concert behavior, and it seems like it’s getting worse.”

There is a difference, however, between the ticket pricing of big venues and smaller house shows—this difference in pricing and crowd size directly correlates to the kind of concert etiquette that shows up in a space like this. Elder frequents house shows, and has gone to bigger concert venues like Target Field and First Avenue.

“House shows are definitely more social. There is much more of a sense of community at house shows,” Elder said. “You’ll go to one house show, and see the same people at another one.”

Because the pricing for house shows is generally more affordable, and the community is more “tightly knit,” local venues don’t seem to reflect the worsening state of mainstream concert culture— which leads me to believe that the decline in concert culture might be a product of the refusal to change the way concerts operate from the way they did 10+ years ago.

What do I mean by this? Well, the giant monopolies that control the ticket market didn’t just appear out of nowhere—Ticketmaster, for example, has been a corporation since the ‘70s. The way tickets are sold and distributed now comes directly from the groundwork these big distributors placed years and years ago. I believe concert culture is seemingly getting worse because we refuse to deviate from the system that has been put into place.

The big artists of today most commonly sell their tickets through companies such as Ticketmaster or AXS, which are known to heavily add on processing fees and breed ticket scalpers like no other. These fees come from a long chain of profit: the venue who paid the artist needs to make that money back, and these ticket companies also need to make profit in some way to be a successful business. While the result of these high ticket prices don’t directly come from the artists themselves, they do have a hand in the process. They might ask for a high sum in order to play at a certain venue, and as a result, ticket pricing has to increase to cover that cost.

Not only has the rising cost of tickets altered concert culture, but also man’s greatest technological invention: the iphone.

I think that we as a culture still have yet to adapt to the concept of phones being at concerts—I have seen countless videos and read countless “think pieces” on people being on their phones at concerts. They do this to record or take photos, or even scroll through social media while waiting in line. With all of this controversy happening surrounding phones, the artist Phoebe Bridgers did something very unconventional: a completely phone-free concert. Concert-goers used their phones to scan their tickets, and then their phones were placed into a pouch that was locked—there were exceptions for people who needed their phones for health/safety reasons. Although I am not a Phoebe Bridgers fan, this concept really interested me, and honestly I really wanted to go to her concert just to be able to experience the phone-free aspect. I think everyone’s first reaction is to be skeptical about this rule.

“The sentiment of a phone-free concert is good, but I don’t think getting people to lock their phones up is the best idea,” Elder said. “If there is an emergency, what happens?”

Similarly when asked, 21-year-old Minneapolis resident Alexa Phillips said “Yeah, with the phone free policy, what happens when you lose your friend in the crowd? It isn’t very accommodating to safety and certain needs.”

After doing some searching online about people’s experiences with this phone-free concert, I was pleasantly surprised with the reactions many people had. Gabe Escobar on TikTok (@gabesco) shared: “I need every concert to be phone free for the rest of my life. It was so much more fun. People were dancing… people were singing along more than I have ever heard people sing along [at a concert].”

The comment section was filled with people who had attended the concert as well, and shared very similar sentiments to Escobar. One particular comment that captured my interest was by Emily (@emilyybridgette): “I was chatting with people in line and was thinking about how nice it must have been when people used to live like this.”

It seems like the phone-free policy was the solution to what modern-day concert culture has been looking for. Without phones, no one can record and post these “viral moments” that lead to more popularity and more demand for tickets; people can attend these concerts because they love the music, not because they were influenced by a video they saw online. There could be more of a community among the concert-goers, like there is at smaller house shows. And of course, people could have fun without the fear of being recorded.

I am interested to see if this trend of the phone-free concert will continue, if other artists will implement this or if fans will persuade them to do so. I am also interested in how concert culture will continue to shift and change, and if the solution of phone-free concerts or selling tickets through a non-monopolized company will shift the culture into something that society seems to crave, rather than the almost sterile environment that concerts have now.