It’s no surprise that social media is changing how we experience live music. And after testing out a new Twitter experiment these last couple of months I thought I’d share the results with you and introduce a new weekly feature called “Tweets of the Week”.
Ever since we did our podcast about concert fan emotions I’ve been curious to find more creative ways to see what sort of situations are creating these emotional moments we have at shows.
So I decided to turn to Twitter to see what exactly most fans tweet about when it comes to emotions and other things related to concerts.
And as I dove into your tweets I was also curious to see whether there were any patterns to the tweets.
The Burning Questions We All Want Answers To
Who tweets more about their emotions, men or women?
What artists and bands use Twitter creatively and who engages with their fans the most?
Are there certain bands that get more “emotional” tweets from fans? Is there an age group that is more prone to emotional tweeting disclosure?
Do more bands get tweeted about than others? Is there a more tweeted topic that keeps popping up?
During my initial experiment I was pleased to find a wide variety of funny, sad, vulnerable and insightful tweets. Yes, your tweets were always entertaining. And your tweets even kept me up at night wondering about your stories and unique experiences, and why that show was so special for you.
I didn’t get answers to all my questions, but again, this is the first of many more weekly “Tweets of the Week” that I will be sharing with you to answer those questions and others. And I expect to get those questions answered and discover more questions.
How Did I Compile These Tweets?
Good question. I used a few things to pull together these tweets.
First, I used Twitter search and Tweetdeck on my lap top and the Tweetdeck Droid and iPhone apps. I usually did the experiment at night, especially on the weekends — which to no surprise turned out to be the busiest time for concert tweets.
I asked questions by @replying to and retweeting the most interesting concert fans tweets that I saw flow through my stream.
I favorited the most interesting tweets for future use. And in some cases I had the honor and pleasure of having a great real-time conversation with a fellow fan to learn more about that show and their favorite concerts and why those moments are so special to them.
And I have to say that in many cases, these interactions on Twitter are some of my favorite things to do when it comes to socializing the live concert experiences.
And what I experienced during these experiments turned out to be very similar to the pleasure I have when I do things like the mobile app Layar experiments.
For this first post, I’ve focused on the emotional tweets and why it’s important that concert fans do tweet during concert. My plan is to add on to this post and use other to dive into all the tweets and hear from you about what you think.
Going forward my plan is that each week on Friday morning we’ll review all the new tweets of the week and explore the specific themes, shows, artists and other topics that I find you tweeting about.
Since this is an ongoing sociological and psychological experiment, I’ll be adding on to this post and others with occasional updates as needed. And I’ll probably be linking to other reports and research post to flesh out our findings. So be sure to come back often to see how this experiment develops and evolves.
So without further ado, here are my favorite and most thought-provoking tweets over the last couple months.
As always if you have any questions or feedback about this experiment, or if you have tweets that you’d like to share, go ahead and post them in the comments below.
What Did I Discover?
As you can see, for this first batch of tweets I used the words “emotional” and “concerts” in the same twitter search to see what would come up. And as you can see, those words really revealed some golden moments.
I love them all, but I’m partically fanscinated by tweets of @aninsxtar and @Phoenyxus because of their level of emotional vulnerabilty.
Both tweets reveal the softer side of emotions such as sadness and crying just as the show is going on. And what was interesting was that most of the emotional tweets I saw that were of the softer variety did come mostly from females. But when males tweeted about their emotions rarely did they mention specific emotions like crying.
For the most part, the guys tweets I found kept it general and emotionally vague. But then I wondered about that.
Did most guys keep it vague because males have a hard time naming their emotions? Or is it because we are afraid to be emotionally vulnerable and share how we are actually feeling during a concert. Or is it a combination of both?
When it comes to our concert memories, I was intrigued by @thegirlx who tweeted about how her concert memories of seeing Alexisonfire and then hearing of their unfortnate breakup.
I could also relate with @Lingygx3 who, after the VMAs were over, realized that she had drafted her tweets but didn’t send them out because the party was so good. This is evidence that sometimes the real-world or the non-virtual experience that’s happening around us pulls us in and keep us from sharing the action with or twitter followers. Or sometimes external factors like other fans, our level of drinking (see her use of the #onetoomany hashtag), or just the rush of the moment keeps us from hitting send on our tweets.
What’s Really Important to You? Why Do You Tweet?
On the flipside, @lingyx3’s tweets also reminds me of all the external stimuli that goes on at concert, and how amazing and powerful twitter really is. Because when you think of all that stimuli and how distracting it could be, appears to be no match for how much we value the chance to share our experiences and express our emotions during a show.
As concert fans, we seem to be able to fight the onslaught of external stimuli to get our thoughts and emotions out to the rest of the world. In short, on some deep level, we truly value what we feel during a concert and believe strongly that it needs to be shared with other concert fans.
And to that point, I think it is very important for concert fans to do what all these fans have done on Twitter because it allows us to humanize, celebrate and personalize the concert experience.
Tweeting your emotions and concert moments is not mundane at all. It’s extremely important and crucial to learning how concerts changes our lives and why we love live music.
And when we do tweet our emotions during shows, or our share emotional memories after the fact like @thegirlx did, our concert experiences become much more meaningful for the larger concert fan community.
It’s not all about you at that point. It’s about your fellow concert fans and the connection you just made by sharing your emotions.
At that point Twitter becomes not just a broadcast tool but an actual living breathing social network. But you have to engage in order to make that happen.
Are Your Tweets Creating a New Revolutionary Fan Community?
And what’s great about the connections we are making, or could make with other fans, is that with each tweeted connection we make on Twitter confirms that our concert experiences are no longer just an emotional escape.
And with each tweeted connection we begin to see the bigger picture and realize how our concert experiences have deep emotional value in the larger context of our lives.
And when this type of tweeting and social sharing happens on a large scale, a new dynamic community is created that has never existed before in the history of live music. And I get goose-bumps every time I think about that. You might even say I get “emotional.”
All this said, thanks to social media, I believe we are living in a extremely pivotal and revolutionary time in the history of concertgoing. And each time you tweet you are further solidifying just how important special these times are to you and the rest of the concert fan community.
That’s all for now. But like I mentioned earlier, this is an ongoing experiment and we’ll be adding to this post to uncover more details and discoveries about the tweets above. And we’ll be sharing our favorite weekly tweets every Friday morning, so stay tuned for more and follow along on Twitter @chriscatania.
What About Your Tweets?
What did you tweet during your last concert? How do you think Twitter is changing live music? Follow us on Twitter @livefixmedia and let us know what you think and we’ll share your feedback during a future episode of Live Fix Radio.