i started out in a similar dilemma you seem to be in where i knew i would regret not seeing an artist at all so i'd rather go alone than miss it. now this is how i go to most concerts. my tips are to do whatever helps you feel the most comfortable and try to put as few barriers between you and the direct experience of the music as possible. for me, this looks like putting my phone on dnd, wearing filtering ear plugs (blocks loudness but not clarity), and maybe bringing a film/digital camera to take some pics without having to use my phone and then getting sucked into checking notifs and being taken out of the moment.
crowd behavior really depends on the show in my experience, but usually if you're at the same show as a stranger there's a good chance you have at least an affinity for that specific artist/genre in common. so if you're comfortable striking up convos with strangers, start there! make some friends! dress however you're comfortable, but in my experience putting on a fit that you're really confident in is like social armor. you feel better and so you present better, and if you feel like drawing attention it will feel more like good attention than anxious insecure attention, "everyone's noticing me 🫣🤭👀🫦😮💨🙂↕️😏" vs "everyone's noticing me 🫠😥🫥😣🫨😶🌫️😵💫"
as far as how to act at a DJ set, i have a whole separate rec about that, but in short just try to engage with the crowd and not the dj whose job isn't really to put on a performance as much as it is to curate a vibe in the room and get folks dancin. just do whatever feels better than standing still and engage with the energy of the crowd. if you have a substance of preference to get you out of your head, use it in moderation to grease the joints (especially if you're flying solo do be safe and know your limits)
Oct 19, 2024
Related Recs
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I started going to shows alone when I was in college for the same reason. Friends don’t always have the same taste as you, sometimes you‘re the only one in town, etc. I’m a pretty introverted person, but I’ve always been a believer in the idea that going alone and not having a good time is still better than not going and regretting it. It‘s more likely though that you’ll have an awesome time! The cool thing about going to a concert alone is that you have something in common with everyone in attendance (you‘re into the same artist and you’re in the same city). One of my closest friends is someone I met at a concert I went to alone. We just started talking in line before the doors opened. If you start feeling super awkward, just get there early and talk to people. If that’s not your vibe, just hang out and dance and sing to an artist you like. It’s very freeing and fun and low stakes bc you don’t know anyone there.
Oct 19, 2024
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the best concerts i've been to alone are ones where i accidentally made temporary friends. i know the anxiety defeats this rec a little bit (i usually am in & out silently when i go to shows alone, so this is rare) but i recently went to a show by myself and made a few friends in line and it made the experience so much more enjoyable. sometimes the anxiety stems from feeling like ur standing/staring in a place where u feel totally isolated as if u dont belong there, but learning even the bare minimum about the ppl around u can sometimes eliminate that. talking to strangers is hard all the time but the lucky thing about concerts is that u definitely have at least 1 thing in common :) butt into some conversations. compliment someone's outfit. it gives u someone to vibe with/talk to for a few minutes or hours and then, if u want, u can disappear and never see them again!
Mar 3, 2024
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deciding to go to a concert alone is so huge, so yay on that !!
definitely agree with whats already been rec’d, but i actually found that going on my phone before events was rly helpful ? that and getting a drink before the show starts gives my hands sth to do, and makes me feel a lot less anxious about being there alone. i’ve noticed that lots of concert venues also tend to have rly shitty reception / data, which can be a good conversation starter with other people around u (esp if you see someone else by themself).
i’m a pretty anxious / self-conscious person in these types of environments, especially if i’m alone. i found that the act of going to a show alone wasn’t as scary as actually being there and trying to enjoy the moment (fear of being perceived and whatnot). i think i’ve had to learn over time:
a) which artists i actually like enough to go see and
b) using the post-concert regret to fight through the insecurities
HAHA tldr, i guess what i’m trying to say is no pressure if u go to a show alone and don’t have the best experience !! all of this is just a learning curve ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥 (but hope u have fun with this concert hehehe)
Oct 20, 2024
Top Recs from @royallmonarch
5d ago
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I consume a lot of music regularly, and a huge part of keeping a fresh diet of new listens going is having enough sources of recommendations that aren’t an algorithm that either 1) reinforces your existing listening patterns, keeping you stagnant in your tastes, or 2) platforms whoever paid enough to push their product to the top, serving you something that may not inherently be of inferior quality, but may not align with your tastes, may not be exciting beyond just being a new release, and realigns your current listening habits to be more in line with what the average user on the platform is also listening to — which socially might have benefits but which creates a homogeneity of consumption that can become bland since you’re listening to something really just because it’s the next product on the assembly line to have its public moment and not because anything about the music actually captured your attention. the current landscape of streaming is designed to keep you at an all you can eat buffet where you take what’s served to you, and as a result a lot of us have forgotten how to look at a menu and order.
so what does taking a more active role in your own music curation look like? for me, it’s meant not using streaming as a primary listening platform. I mostly use my local Apple Music library on my phone that I curate with the vestigial iTunes Library framework that’s still a part of Apple Music on my laptop. probably going to find an alternative soon since apple seems to be cutting integration progressively. I like this method because it forces me to choose what to sync to the limited storage space I have, forcing me to take inventory of what I actually listen to and what I can offload. the files I get are mostly from Bandcamp or Soulseek depending on whether it’s available for purchase or entirely unavailable online (as is the case for a lot of electronic music that was on vinyl only, which is where soulseek comes in clutch). I also have freedom here to change the ID3 tags to better sort and organize, rate, change track info, and track my own listening data.
Bandcamp and other music purchasing platforms are great because 1) it reshapes my relationship to music away from consumerism and back towards curation. I have to pay actual money for this thing now if I want to use it, so i’m forced to consider its value (usually i’ll stream a release first to gauge my interest). 2) having to spend money helps me to course out my meals so to speak, as i’ll buy a few releases i’ve accumulated in my cart over the month and cash out on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of my money is actually getting to the artist (TOMORROW IS BANDCAMP FRIDAY BTW!!!), and between purchases I can actually chew and savor and digest my last orders, they don’t get swept up in the deluge of new releases. my plate is full until i’m done and then I order more. also for the times of the year like now when new music isn’t coming out as regularly I take time to find older music that I would normally overlook while keeping up with new drops. currently very into early 80s/late 70s music with early digital production, kinda stuff that would evolve into synthpop and dance music.
so how do you know what to order? for me, I’m getting recs through trusted curation platforms. whether it’s bandcamp daily, y’all lovely folks here on PI.FYI, friends, or most importantly musicians who I follow on socials that share their tastes through posts, stories, playlists on steaming, interviews, etc. I like this last one especially because it’s kind of like a musical game of telephone. if I like an artist and they share their interests and influences it’s like every layer in this process is stretching my palate further from the sound that I was originally interested in and into a new territory that has some shared DNA but would never have been recommended to me by an algo because there’s no shared category or label between them, only the musical influence and interpretation of it made by the artist. as an example, I was a huge Skrillex stan, he signed KOAN Sound to his label, they collab with Asa who collabs with Sorrow, Sorrow takes huge influence from Burial, Burial makes some ambient adjacent stuff and takes huge influence from 90s rave music and drum and bass and 2000s rnb, now i’m listening to Brandy - All in Me, William Basinski, Aphex Twin, none on whom would get recommended by Spotify to me from Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.
LAST thing i’ll say — because in yappin about this i’m realizing how actually passionate about this subject I am: MAKE LISTS! playlists are cool, but they can flatten your music into vague categories of “vibes” and “aesthetics” and encourage picking one-off songs from artists that you never form an active audience relationship with. I make a practice of making my own year end lists of top 25 albums (plus some honorable recs and top individual songs) and keeping them in a notes doc that I regularly update and rearrange over the course of the year. this forces me to consider the actual relationship i’m forming with what i’ve ordered for myself. did I like it in the moment but it didn’t have staying power? is it slowly growing on me? it also encourages taking albums as a whole. maybe I liked one or two tracks a lot but the rest wasn't resonating. that’s ok! maybe I rank it lower but now i’ve actually taken time to consider it, it’s in my library, and maybe (quite a few cases for me) something I ranked like bottom 5 albums becomes a retroactive favorite from that year as my tastes evolve. also 25 albums to take with me from each year is really more than you'd think, i struggle sometimes to even find 25 that I formed a true connection with. I think the biggest thing the itunes era ruined that led into now is the single-ification of music, the ability to separate the hits from the deep cuts. albums are meant to be taken as a whole, and then once you've really sat with the whole you can find what actually stuck. even then I like to keep the whole around because soooo often i’ll write off a track that yeeeears later I come to love. trust the artist, they made it like they did for a reason.
aaannyyyywayy TLDR: get recs organically, be more active in deciding your listening patterns, fr*cken pay artists yall, trust the artist embrace the album, really consider what you consume
Feb 29, 2024
3d ago