Why you love concerts:

Maybe I’m biased, but I think the concept of a concert is the best thought to have ever crossed a human being’s mind. The opportunity to go to concerts is one of the reasons that drew me towards becoming a writer for The Berkeley B-Side in the first place. Some of my life’s most thrilling and happiest moments have been at concerts. It’s only natural that the practice of going to concerts arose in our history centuries ago; if you’re reading this, chances are you’re already aware of music’s natural ability to bring people together, connect them in an inexplicable way. So why exactly do we love concerts so much?

Even if you think you’re going to a concert “just for the music,” there’s a lot else you’re likely absorbing as part of the experience.

Interestingly, spending money on a concert, psychologically, is more attractive than spending money on a shirt or some shoes. Our brain is aware of the fact that we are buying an “experience,” not an item, and as such, values it higher. Research has long shown that music releases dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, an area part of the reward pathway of our brain that makes us feel pleasure. Concerts help relieve stress too. Cortisol is a hormone in your body that regulates stress, and another study (2016) has shown a decrease in cortisol levels in some 1000 participants after attending a concert. Listening to live music does even more of that, because it places listeners within the music rather than placing the music within the listener (i.e. via headphones). Have you ever gotten chills while listening to music? This phenomenon is called “frisson,” and is even more likely to happen during live music, because according to research done by Eastern Washington University (2015), these are caused by an intense emotional reaction to music you’re listening to. A study done by Shoda (2016) shows that in listening to the same music live versus via a recording, people felt more joy while listening to the live version.

We are intrinsically social animals. Concerts are social events slightly different from those that are more commonplace in our daily lives, but the connections we form with people under the canopy of music are strong nevertheless. A study conducted by Weinberg (2017) suggests this. The release of the hormone epinephrine gives you the “adrenaline rush” you get from concerts, heightening your senses and energizing you. Being around people creates a sense of community, fueled by the hormones endorphins and dopamine, both of which increase short-term happiness and wellbeing. The release of dopamine in your brain is actually the biological basis of addiction. So if you think you’re addicted to going to concerts, this might be true in a quite literal sense. A purely philosophical musing: music is nothing but wavelengths of sound, after all, and I can imagine that experiencing those wavelengths with others who are physiologically impacted in the same way and at same time as you undoubtedly develops a sort of kinship. The fact that all cultures in history have had one thing in common – music – might be proof enough that we all appreciate music similarly, regardless of where we come from.

When we go to concerts, we participate in music’s magic ability to connect people. I’m not a professional artist, but even the times I have performed on a stage in front of people have been highly indicative of this. Listening to an artist on Spotify is worlds apart from listening to them live; I know I’m not alone on this. Seeing, appreciating, and even meeting the person behind the sounds you listen to in your headphones on the way to class gives the music so much more meaning. As consumers, we subconsciously define ourselves by the music we listen to, and going to concerts further validates our identity, to ourselves and others present. Not to mention, going to concerts demonstrates fans’ preferences in music and musical trends, and can be valuable to the progression of an artist’s career in the music industry, both personally and financially.

I have always thought the idea of a crowd of hundreds of people swaying to the same beat, interpreting and appreciating the music in hundreds of different ways was fascinating. What the music I’m listening to at a concert means to me isn’t necessarily what it means to the person next to me. We all internalize the same music in unique ways, and that is what makes music so universal yet personal at the same time.

Written by Sanjana Sanghani