You see an announcement that an artist is announcing a new tour. Because you have a few of their songs on your playlist, you hop in the Ticketmaster queue and fight for nosebleed tickets for the opportunity to hear your favorite hits live.
Once you’ve secured the tickets, you go online to see if others are just as excited for the concert as you are. Instead, you are met with a stream of bitter creators telling you that you stole your tickets straight from the hands of “real fans.”
In the past few years, there has been a surge in online arguments over how big a fan you must be to attend a concert. Never did I expect that the sentence “anyone should be able to attend a concert” would spark a whole debate.
Most of the videos that go viral read something along the lines of “If you don’t know these five very specific underground songs, you don’t deserve to see the artist live.” It feels like a rebranding of the awful “name five songs” crowd that polices strangers over wearing band T-shirts.
Back when Taylor Swift announced The Eras Tour, it was pretty expected that tickets would be hard to come by. Some fans who couldn’t get tickets responded by listing off the most least-known of her 280+ released tracks and insisting that those who didn’t recognize the songs were basic and less deserving of tickets.
However, nobody is less deserving than anyone else as long as they fairly bought tickets like everyone else.
This past week, when Noah Kahan announced his Great Divide tour, many were mad that so-called fake fans swiped all the tickets.
Many rushed online to complain that they lost their tickets to fans who discovered Kahan through his hit single “Stick Season.” While it is understandable to be disappointed that your favorite artist is becoming more mainstream, true fans would have some sort of understanding that “Stick Season” did wonders for Kahan’s career.
Kahan is constantly speaking up in interviews and clips on his Instagram, expressing gratitude for all the listeners who got him to where he is now. While fans who followed him back when he first started are important, so are the millions of monthly listeners who are selling out the stadiums he is touring.
As someone who enjoys live music, I have been on both sides of the spectrum. From knowing every lyric of every song to attending a concert just because the lead singer was in a movie that I liked, my ultimate takeaway is that the number of songs you can list off does not matter. The only thing that actually matters when attending a concert is that you are looking to have a good time.
You shouldn’t have to be a super fan or know every single niche song an artist has released to earn the right to buy tickets. Trying to differentiate fans and shame newer listeners from attending concerts is only hurting your favorite artist.
