Back in April, we published a list of 12 Ways To Be A Dickhead At A Gig. While there was some mild controversy, people pretty much universally agreed that you shouldn’t take your phone out and film the entire gig or spend the majority of the performance texting or taking selfies.

Basically, just keep your phone in your pocket. You’re there to see a show and ideally you’re doing it through your eyeballs and not through the dull blue glow of your mobile phone screen. Not only is what you’re doing affecting your appreciation of the performance, it’s also rude.

However, Donnie Dinch, the GM of Consumer for Ticketfly and co-founder of WillCall, a music discovery app that Ticketfly have acquired, is a little more sympathetic to phone users at gigs. He reckons phones might actually be the future of the live music experience.

Not necessarily the live music part, but he’s pretty confident that things like paying for merch and drinks will soon be mobile. But Dinch is more interested in the way mobile phones will be able to create a unique experience for live music consumers, such as VIP offers streamed direct to your phone.

“By pairing mobile with technologies like beacons and proximity-aware notifications, venues can create a night out for fans where the only thing they have to do is enjoy the show, while everything they want — like drink discounts and VIP access — is delivered directly to their pocket,” he writes in Billboard.

“There’s significant money to be made in the process: A 2013 Nielsen study said fans would be willing to spend up to $2.6 billion more annually for opportunities like behind-the-scenes meet-and-greets with artists and exclusive content.”

See, Dinch has put quite a bit of research into this whole incorporating mobile phones into the live music space thing and while the findings are exciting for someone who owns an app that relies on mobile phones being used at gigs, the results are a little more dismal for those who want to see fewer phones in venues.

“We asked our friends over at Harris Poll to find out how — and how much — fans are using their phones at events, and the results were pretty staggering,” Dinch writes. You may already have your own estimates in mind – “They never bloody put their phones away!”

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However, as Dinch notes, “Close to a third (31 percent) of 18-34 year olds who own a smartphone and go to live events say they are on their phone during half of the event or longer. Less than 15 percent of that group said they ‘never’ use their phones during a live event.”

Meanwhile, 40 percent of females 18-34 use their phones to snap pictures and videos during events (compared to 24 percent of males their age), and they are 59 percent more likely than their male counterparts to share their experiences via social during an event.

There you have it. While millennials may not have their phones out throughout the entirety of the gigs they attend, a third of them have their phones out for half the performance or longer. Maybe they need to go over our list of 12 Ways To Be A Dickhead At A Gig again?

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