Time to get the smartphones off the dancefloor?

A brand new nightclub is opening this week with a strict rule that your smartphone digital camera have to be lined in stickers.

Ember in Manchester is the newest of some venues within the UK to implement this coverage – ​​however in cities like Berlin, which is legendary for its nightclubs, it's the norm.

Amber director Jeremy Abbott advised the BBC that the membership took the choice as a result of “we really want to keep the music and the experience front and centre”, however the situation is being debated on social media.

some posted Instagram There are issues that golf equipment may undergo losses as social media movies of their nights act as free ads, whereas others welcomed the transfer as “partying with privacy”.

“It's the fear of being put on the Internet, isn't it?” One lady advised the BBC after we requested younger individuals in Manchester how they felt in regards to the no-camera cellphone rule in golf equipment.

“Being really drunk and having that embarrassing picture of you on Insta, waking up and seeing last night's events.”

Another lady stated: “It makes the atmosphere better, because less people [are] Being more involved on your phone, with DJs and stuff, it's just a better environment.”

So are Britain's clubs at a turning point? Is it time to get the phones off the dancefloor and get people's minds back on the music?

Sacha Lord, Greater Manchester's night-time economy consultant, thinks so. “These phones are killing the dancefloor, they're killing the atmosphere,” he says.

“DJs hate it. It's really demoralizing to look at a sea of ​​phones and not hear anyone dancing.”

Smokin' Joe, who has been DJing since 1990, remembers when the rave and club scene was booming in the late '80s and early '90s.

“Everyone's hands in the air, cheering, cheering.

“Now videos are being posted of people standing there waving their phones in the air. It's very sad,” she says.

But Dr Lee Hadlington, senior lecturer in cyberpsychology at Nottingham Trent University, says for those clubbers, “part of the fun is documenting their night out in the form of photographs and memories”.

In Amber, there is no outright ban on phones, but clubbers must place stickers on camera lenses to prevent them from taking photographs. Instead a content team will be on hand to take photos and post them online.

Abbott says people breaking the rules will be “politely asked to stop”. “If you are caught doing this again, you will be asked to leave the venue.”

The rules come at a difficult time for Britain's nightclub landscape, which is struggling to recover from multiple Covid lockdowns.

Between June 2020 and June this year, the number of clubs fell from 1,266 to 786, according to data from the Night Time Industries Association and research firm NielsenIQ.

Abbott admits Amber's no-calling rule is a risk but says the club has been “shocked” by the reaction.

Lord says this policy could be a “transfer ahead” for the industry and “convey vitality again to the dancefloor”.

Graeme Park, one among Britain's most well-known DJs and a key determine at Manchester's well-known Hacienda nightclub, says: “I completely understand and think it's a good idea to have no smartphones on the dancefloor.

“However, I have a 20-year-old son. He makes music, he DJs, he goes to clubs and he says, 'Why is your generation telling our generation that we can't use our smartphones? '”

Ben Park, Graeme's son, says: “Personally, I don't mind having phones in clubs. I completely understand the no phone policy but at the same time people want to post pictures of themselves or their friends on social media, people want to promote it online.”

But he understands why some clubbers — and DJs — get annoyed by so-called TikTok ravers, who “literally go to shows just to pretend they went there and just post it on TikTok,” he says. They say.

Cyberpsychologist Dr. Hadlington says that for these clubbers, it may be about a fear of missing out on the social media action.

“The paradox is that they're spending more time posting about it than enjoying the good time,” he says.

It may be a relatively new concept in the UK, but 90% of venues in Berlin have a no phone on dancefloor code, according to Lutz Leichsenring, former spokesperson for Clubcommission Berlin and co-founder of VibeLab.

He says that with more tourists flocking to the German capital to enjoy the scene, “I think people really appreciated that this policy was a part of clubbing”.

And, on a personal note, he says that for him, “It's very, very strange when I'm in a club where people around me are taking pictures and filming the whole time”.

Amber is following the same policy as London nightclub Fabric since reopening post-Covid in 2021. The venue has been virtually camera-free since opening its doors in 1999, but as technology changed and smartphones became more ubiquitous, it has changed its policy.

“When people come to the discovery point, we put a sticker on the camera lens and actually invite people not to use it, that's all,” says Fabric co-founder Cameron Leslie. ”

He says that most of the clubbers follow the rules. “This is not aggressive enforcement,” he says. “We have posters up in the club and then if people do use them and our team sees them we invite them not to do so.”

Smokin' Joe believes the DJs themselves can take some action.

“Maybe DJs must put a clause of their contracts that claims 'I'll do the present however you want some type of coverage' as a result of we're shedding the id of the scene and its roots.”

Fellow DJ Graeme Park believes there isn’t any simple reply to smartphones in nightclubs, however provides: “It's really great that people are talking about it.

“This cultural ideology is changing and that's the great thing about clubbing, attitudes change every decade or every few years.”

Additional reporting: Kirsty Grant and Max Chesterton