A K-pop band’s plea to fans: Put down the phone
At a time when concert-goers are renting high-end phones just to record performances, K-pop band Cortis has made a radical appeal to its fans: Put your phone down. So serious is the band in its objection to fans using phones to capture its live performances — instead of actually experiencing them — that the phrase has become the name of its ongoing concert tour. Whether or not their followers heed the request, Cortis has reopened one of the most heated debates of the digital age: At what point does recording an experience become a refusal to live it? There is a case for making the most of a concert given how much ticket prices cost today. All the fans want to do is to relive those moments whenever they want besides sharing them on social media. Artists, too, are not oblivious to the power of virality; entire concerts are now designed to yield visuals with the potential to “break the internet”. So when the six-inch barrier of the smartphone screen goes up between the fan and the artist, the blame does not rest entirely on the former. But when Cortis and others decry the use of phones at concerts, they’re lamenting a very particular kind of loss. The electric energy that can only exist between fan and artist during a live performance is impossible to record or replay, much less share for likes and reposts. Long after the concert is over, it can be retrieved from memory. For that, however, it needs to be experienced.
- 1While concerts are private commercial events rather than public forums, the debate over phone use raises a related governance question about how private venues can lawfully restrict devices; in India such restrictions are typically enforced through ticket terms and conditions rather than statute, since no general law prohibits recording at entertainment events unless it infringes copyright or privacy. This distinguishes venue-level no-phone rules from state-imposed restrictions on expression, a useful contrast for constitutional law questions on Article 19(1)(a).
- 2India's own live entertainment industry has grappled with similar tensions, with several artists experimenting with phone-free sections at concerts following global trends started by acts using Yondr-style pouches since the mid-2010s. This reflects a broader social shift in how audiences negotiate attention, privacy, and shared experience in an era where smartphone penetration in India crossed several hundred million users through the 2020s, reshaping how live events are consumed and remembered.
- 3Under Section 38A of the Copyright Act, 1957, performers in India hold special rights over the live reproduction of their performances, meaning unauthorised recording and commercial redistribution of concert footage can, in principle, attract civil liability, even though enforcement against individual fan recordings for personal use remains rare and legally contested. This statutory backdrop is distinct from, but related to, the broader ethical debate the editorial raises about recording performances.
- 4The global live music industry was valued at tens of billions of dollars by the mid-2020s, with ticket prices for major international tours frequently exceeding one hundred dollars, a cost pressure the editorial cites as one reason fans feel entitled to capture and re-experience performances through recordings. This economic reality sits in tension with artists' calls for phone-free engagement, since higher prices tend to increase, rather than decrease, fans' psychological need to own a memento of the experience.