For fans of live music, the dawn of smart phones has been a blessing and a curse.
For fans of live music, the dawn of smart phones has been a blessing and a curse.
Sure, its fun to relive some of your favorite moments on a video or two, but when every jerk with a data plan starts recording, or some jack ass who leaves their flash on manages to totally kill the mood, it makes you rethink the greatest technological advancement in recent human history.
Enter Yondr.
Yondr is an interesting mix of new and old tech which aims to make sure folks don’t use their phones during live events.
The system starts simple enough, when a guest enters a venue they are given a black pouch. You’re asked to put your phone in the pouch and keep it there. And an invisible fence-type system manages to keep the pouch’s digital lock locked for the duration of the event.
If you need to use your phone, leaving the venue or invisible fenced area allows the pouch to open.
Guests return the pouch at the end of the show and everyone goes home with the shared experience of WATCHING A SHOW IN REAL LIFE AND NOT THROUGH A GLASS SCREEN.
“Smartphones have fundamentally changed how we live,” reads the info on Yondr’s website. But even they admit the useful tool has become more of a compulsive habit than a gift.
“In some situations, [smart phones] have become a distraction and a crutch—cutting people off from each other and their immediate surroundings… Yondr has a simple purpose: to show people how powerful a moment can be when we aren’t focused on documenting or broadcasting it.”
Seems simple enough.
Obviously this tech wouldn’t and shouldn’t exist at all venues. Smaller acts who rely on fan-made videos going viral could see some serious damage if they lose that kind of opportunity.
But for big name artists who rely on income from touring shows, this kind of tech is a blessing.
Take Dave Chappelle, for example, who has 13 sold out shows in Chicago coming up. According to the Hollywood Reporter he’s already set up with Yondr to keep all his shows phone free.
A long time advocate for no-recording at shows, Chappelle heard about the tech after fellow comedian Hannibal Buress starting using it. Burress had a live video of him repeatedly calling Bill Cosby a rapist which spurred the alternative comic to check out new methods of keeping his jokes for live audiences only.
According to Yondr founder Graham Dugoni, 29, Live Nation and Chappelle worked together to get the tech ready for his performances.
“It’s a huge thing for Chappelle, like all comedians: how to make the show phone-free,” Dugoni told the Hollywood Reporter. “The deal came together pretty quickly.”
Is this something we could see in the future? Probably – but what will we do when artists perform slow emotional songs and nobody has lighters cause everyone quit smoking?
