Camera phones capture favorite bands

Picked this up in Wired: "At a massive annual conference and festival of music in Austin Texas, SXSW, a hot trend was spotted, people with camera phones holding up their handsets to capture their favorite bands".

Makes perfect sense. I've read about concert goers raising their cell phones as lighters, to play a ringtone or share the music with a friend listening in on their handset, something referred to as a cellcert. See related articles:

-- Mobile phones are the new lighters - John Alderman shares an experience he had in Tokyo last week in his Journal on TheFeature.com. "What piqued my attention was when the singer opened his clamshell phone and waved its brightly lit screen in the air back and forth over his head. The audience quickly got the message and responded in kind. A camera panning over the audience captured the scene of hundreds of young, Japanese concertgoers happily waving their opened handsets in the air, creating a beautiful field of bobbing lights."

"When the immensely popular Nylon Beat, Finland's home-grown version of the Spice Girls, plays the opening bars of a song at its rock concerts, fans by the hundreds hold up their phones and ring along with the singers. Nylon Beat released its last single, "Not Guilty," as a ring tone even before the CD came out; this teaser proved so effective that "Not Guilty" hit No. 1 in Finland on the first day of sale."

-- How people are using camera phones - At concerts, instead of using lighters, fans raise their cell phones, and snap away - despite the standard ban on cameras - and hold them up so their buddy at home can hear, something referred to as a "cellcert".

emily | 5:57 PM | Video Phones |
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