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Cell phones are the must-have accessory for concertgoers
Mar 19, 2010 (St. Louis Post-Dispatch - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Forget about flicking your Bic when your favorite band pulls out a power ballad in concert.
Instead pull out your phone.
Lighters have been replaced by smart phones with applications that flash an image of a flickering flame.
It's just one of the many uses for the modern concertgoers' must-have accessory and will surely be in full force at tonight's Jay-Z concert and Saturday's John Mayer show at Scottrade Center.
Things are moving so swiftly that staying home and watching concerts stream live on cell phones may become the norm.
"It's something that goes hand in hand as a concertgoer -- your ticket and then your cell phone," said Justin Stiehr, Verizon Wireless' associate director of marketing for Missouri and Kansas. "After you get patted down, those are the two things you walk into a concert with."
Stiehr said about 70 percent of pop music fans are using phones at concerts in ways that have nothing to do with making calls.
They are putting up concert clips on You Tube or Twitter while the show is still going, texting messages to a screen on the stage and using an application to identify a song they don't know.
"Clearly, cell phones have become pervasive, and have added a new dimension to the concert experience," said Steve Litman, executive producer of Steve Litman Presents, which books shows at the Fox Theatre and other venues. "There's a new electronic layer of sharing the experience that's happening in real time."
Music fan Jerome Redding, a 24-year-old field technician for Redbox, is all over his HTC Touch Pro phone at concerts. "I find it an innovative way to connect with folks, with people at the venue and my community of friends on the social networking sites," he said. Redding posted photos of Lady Gaga's concert in January at the Fox Theatre to Facebook during the show.
Carlyn Christian, a 17-year-old student at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, frequently uses her iPhone at concerts, including at shows for Lady Gaga, Rascal Flatts, Jonas Brothers and Taylor Swift. She favors text-to-screen messages, which are projected on display screens on or near the stage between acts or before the show.
"I like the fact that I've gotten messages up there, and it's easy to get them up on the screen," Christian said.
Stiehr said more than 70,000 text-to-screen messages were sent at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater concerts last summer. Pointfest had the most with more than 15,000 messages.
Also at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, fans can show their Verizon phones to gain early access to the venue and parking lot.
Niecy Davis of WFUN-FM (Foxy 95), who hosted the recent Fresh Fest concert with Salt-N-Pepa at Chaifetz Arena, asked fans to text her on her cell phone for a chance to win backstage passes to the show.
Davis said it was easier than having people fill out slips of paper and dropping their names into a box. "That's not the most practical way to get them to enter a contest," she said. Fans who participated were added to a database, so they could receive concert updates and other content on their phone.
That customer appreciation angle, where fans text for backstage passes or seat upgrades, was something practiced at the How Sweet the Sound gospel competition at Scottrade Center last year. Verizon set up an area where people stood in front of a green screen to create photos that looked as if they were performing with the headlining acts. The video was sent to fans' phones.
Another growing use of phones at concerts isn't a hit in every circle. Fans are increasingly posting live clips on You Tube, and with expanded memory cards, the clips are getting longer.
Thanks to You Tube, we've seen Beyonce tumble down some stairs in concert, Lady Gaga slip and fall and Brad Paisley topple off the stage.
Some record labels have removed fans' clips from You Tube. Warner Music Group famously deleted footage from a Led Zeppelin reunion concert from You Tube in 2007 because the band owned the rights to the show and asked that all clips be taken down.
But even that is changing. "Artists are becoming more and more lax with that," Stiehr said.
Added Litman, "It's OK with us as long as it's OK with the artist." What the industry needs to better realize, he said, is that artists can no longer regulate all the images that stem from a performance. Banning cameras from concerts, which still happens today, was a way to control this, but now "every cell phone is a camera."
Litman's bigger concern is fans videotaping and photographing in ways that disturb concertgoers around them. "I don't want people annoying or abusing people by being photographers rather than being concertgoers."
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to http://www.stltoday.com. Copyright (c) 2010, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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