Fans who attended Fred Again’s concert in London last month didn’t have to wait long to get their hands on souvenirs. Upon entering the venue at Alexandra Palace, staff placed a black sticker with the location and date of the show above the camera lens of fans’ smartphones.
Just one week later, music lovers who were lucky enough to score tickets to Harry Styles’ One Night in Manchester show received an even more snazzy keepsake. Disposable analog cameras, each loaded with approximately 20 shots, were distributed to attendees at the Co-op Live Arena.
Although participants did not have to pay for souvenirs, they still incurred personal costs. The two musicians employed different tactics in pursuit of a common goal: preventing live audience members from filming the event on their cellphones.
Maybe it’s “a sign of the times,” as host Styles sang on last week’s Saturday Night Live. Performers Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Adele and Childish Gambino are among the superstar artists who have aggressively, sometimes desperately, begged fans to put down their cameras at their shows.
More and more people are taking things a step further by taking matters into their own hands.
The camera covering technique employed by British DJ Fred Again will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has visited fold, fabric, or other UK nightclubs with similar sticker policies.
It is a synonym for, and perhaps the origin of, Berlin’s popular queer party space. There, techno clubs like Berghain enjoy near-mythical reputations, thanks in part to strictly enforced internal privacy rules.
Sticker’s approach is rooted in a desire to not only protect the dance floor experience, but also to foster a safe space for dance floor enthusiasts. Removing a sticker at these clubs may not get you sent off, but it will almost certainly bring you bad publicity.
Fabric said the no-photography policy allows clubbers to “focus on what’s important: the music.” The styles seem to match. Speaking about a visit to a dance club in Berlin last year, the British singer-songwriter recalled the euphoric feeling of being “freed up” in a phone-free environment.
“I don’t look around the room anymore to see if someone was filming…I just remember being in this kind of trance during the music and tears rolling down my cheeks,” he said in an interview on Canadian podcast CBC’s “Q with Tom Power” published earlier this month.
Perhaps these “beautiful experiences” influenced his decision to introduce a no-mobile recording policy at his Manchester show, which was streamed on Netflix to celebrate the release of his new album Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.
In addition to applying the stickers, organizers of the 23,500-capacity Co-op Live arena also asked ticket buyers to put their phones in recyclable “smart bags.” The smart bag blocks the camera lens while allowing users to access basic phone functions.
With the exception of a rebellious few who managed to get away with it, the approach worked exactly as intended, especially in contrast to the “sea of telephones” he saw in previous Styles live footage, echoing concert critic and photographer Ali Al Hashimi.
“Everyone else was just there, living in the moment. I thought it was really, really special,” he told CNN.
Al Hashimi, who also attended the night of Fred Again’s London residency, believed the bag offered relative security against the temptations of recording.
I always used my cell phone at shows, but my itch to take photos to remember the moment was quelled by the free disposable cameras and the arena’s professional photographers, whose images were uploaded to a website for fans to view or download later.
“I had my photo taken and I really like it. It’s a nice keepsake,” Al Hashimi said.
“At the end of the day, live music is about connection,” he added. “You feel a connection to the artist, and you feel a connection to the thousands of people who were there with you.”
But no one in the Co-Op Live arena, and probably no one in the audience at any of his concerts, had a perspective as unique as Chris Lloyd’s.
While Al Hashimi and friends danced, Lloyd spun watercolors on canvas, creating the latest in a growing series of live sketches he creates at music, art, and sporting events.
From the Super Bowl halftime show to Rio’s Carnival, his “accidental” talent, born from a hobby he started to escape the stress of work, blossomed into a self-employed business that took him around the world, raising awareness of the way smartphones captivated audiences along the way.
“I’ve noticed that so many people just film the whole concert on their phones. I’m guilty of seeing the show differently, too, but I think there’s a strange disconnect every time I pull out my phone to record something,” said Lloyd, who is based in London and sells prints of the sketches online.
“I don’t want a photo that I’ll never see again. It’s a grainy, grainy photo. And I generally don’t need to show my friends a crappy 16-second video taken from the back of the room.”
Lloyd, who had the pleasure of watching strangers take pictures of each other with disposable cameras at Styles’ shows, hopes more concerts will move to a no-phone policy.
That change is “accelerating,” believes Graham Dugoni, founder of Los Angeles-based company Yonder.
Used by performers such as Bob Dylan, Madonna, Paul McCartney and many others, more than 20 million devices have been safely stored in Yondr’s lockable magnetic pouches at 10,000 events, the company said. Users retain possession of the pouch and can access their phone at any time by accessing the “unlock base” located outside the performance area.
“Once you go to a show where no one has a screen in their hands, you realize what was missing,” he told CNN. “The sense of sharing energy and being together somewhere, the spontaneity and freedom that comes from enjoying the moment without being recorded or constantly distracted.”
Among the collaborations with Yondr is This Never Happened (TNH), an event series created by American DJ Lane 8 (real name Daniel Goldstein). As we celebrate our 10th anniversary this year, our philosophy is simple. “No recording or filming allowed. If you weren’t there, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Goldstein says that no-phone policies, which were limited to a few underground clubs a decade ago, are now becoming mainstream. Goldstein said he believes the increasing adoption of this approach reflects a broader cultural recognition that the “dominance” of phones over attention spans “is not necessarily the best thing.”
“When people step away from technology for four hours, it often feels like all kinds of awareness, emotions, and energies come to the surface,” Goldstein told CNN.
“There’s an element of self-discovery in these shows, and it takes very different forms for different people. Some people might have a happy realization that they’re not as alone as they thought. Others might have a deeper awareness of issues in their life. Others might realize they really missed jumping up and down like a kid because no one was watching.”
However, a no-phone policy also has its drawbacks.
One is simply a question of logistics. Answering the phone puts an additional strain on venue time and resources. Al Hashimi said he has “never seen” lines like those at Co-op Live to get into Styles’ gigs.
Other factors include the safety and security of the crowd. Telephones are an important resource in emergencies. Al Hashimi said he spoke to someone at Styles’ live who needed access to his device to check his diabetic wife’s blood sugar levels.
He added that the fact that the event was held in Manchester, which still bears the scars of the 2017 terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena, only heightened fears for the safety of some attendees.
Somewhat ironically, in-crowd calls help connect artists with a wider audience. Viral concert clips can give performers a boost by driving ticket sales or simply putting them at the center of conversation.
Coldplay singer Chris Martin regularly asks audience members to drop their phones during performances of the song ‘A Sky Full of Stars’, but while their live footage posted on social media – a sensuous spectacle of LED wristbands and lasers – has racked up millions of views, some members of the audience notoriously don’t want to be seen.
For these reasons, Al Hashimi and Lloyd don’t expect cellphones to suddenly disappear from crowds, but they don’t lose sight of the fact that the movement to reduce their presence at shows is being driven by younger generations of artists and fans who are perhaps most connected to smartphones.
“When I talk to my parents about gigs and other things, they talk about the good old days when there weren’t so many phones in the sky. I definitely empathize with them about moments being taken away,” Al Hashimi said.
“My mom and dad used to say, ‘Leave your phone on the dinner table. You’re not going to be there,'” Lloyd said. “Now my dad is the one filming all the songs at concerts.”
“I think that as the years go by, there is a greater reliance on mobile phones, but there is also a greater desire to move away from mobile phones, and both coexist,” he added. “So I hope things change.”
