Morat is right: the concert ticket is now a status symbol

How many people at the last show you went to were actually listening? Not filming, not checking who else was there, not composing the caption. Listening. If the question made you wince, you already understand what Morat just said out loud.

In an interview with El Tiempo, picked up by Marca, the band put it bluntly: "Las redes sociales trajeron unas ganas de ir a conciertos más por estatus que por gusto, es el FOMO..." In plain English: social media brought a desire to attend concerts more for status than for enjoyment. That's the FOMO.

We only have that line, not the full interview, so we won't put more words in their mouths. But the claim is sharp enough to argue with, and in our view it's mostly right.

The ticket stopped being a ticket and became a receipt

A concert used to be an experience you had and then maybe described. Now it's evidence. The ticket proves you were there, the story proves you were there in time, and the grid proves you are the kind of person who is there. The show happens in the arena, but the audience that matters is on the phone.

The most revealing symptom is the one that cuts out the music entirely. According to It's The Trend, a fake concert attendance trend on Instagram is about social clout, not fandom, with people using borrowed or paid-for concert footage to look more connected, richer or more in demand than they are. Think about what that means. The status is so valuable that people want it without the concert. The show itself has become optional.

That is the logical endpoint of what Morat describes. If the point is to be seen, the cheapest way to be seen wins, and sometimes that isn't going at all.

The machine is built to make us want it

It would be too easy to blame "kids these days." The mechanism is older and more mechanical than that. As Gizmodo explains, social platforms lean on unpredictable rewards, and a 2021 study in Nature Communications found that behavior across more than a million posts from over 4,000 users followed patterns consistent with reward learning. Likes look like a currency, and we adjust our behavior to earn them.

Now add a feed full of other people's best nights. A research page on the ACR Journal website argues that social media marketing combined with FOMO-inducing promotional tactics has synergistic effects on event attendance, particularly among digital-native generations. Our reading: the people selling tickets have probably noticed that the fear works. We think that's the uncomfortable part. FOMO may not be just a feeling we catch, it may also be a sales tool.

Cost is part of this too. A Marketing Dive piece reports that as ticket prices surge, more consumers are turning to virtual attendance, based on Horizon Futures data. So the status ticket gets pricier while a watered-down version of it, the stream, gets easier. We'd guess that widens the gap between those who can afford to be seen and those who watch other people being seen.

But the hollowing-out isn't guaranteed

Here is where we'd nuance the thesis. Being there for the wrong reasons doesn't automatically mean a worse night. A study on Emerald looks at how FOMO affects social media engagement, concert satisfaction and post-event regret among concert tourists, and uses social comparison theory to explain why FOMO may suppress sharing rather than drive it in high-visibility settings. In other words, the pressure to perform may make people hold back, not post more. The snippet we have doesn't tell us the results, so we won't claim to know the verdict. But it's a reminder that status anxiety and enjoyment don't sit on a simple seesaw.

Live music, for its part, doesn't look like it's suffering. A Gunn Oracle piece notes that Live Nation estimated a 24% increase in concert attendance from 2021 to 2022 nationwide, with young people leading the charge. That is a post-pandemic rebound and an older figure, so it proves little about today. Still, it suggests social media has been good at filling venues, whatever it does to the quality of attention inside them. Artists can hardly complain about full rooms, which is why Morat's candor stands out.

What to do about it

The cost of "going to be seen" isn't that fans are shallow. It's that attention is finite. Every minute spent framing the shot is a minute taken from the song, and we suspect the band on stage can often tell.

Our verdict: Morat is diagnosing a real shift, and it deserves more credit for saying it than it will probably get. Our recommendation is almost embarrassingly simple. Go to the show you'd attend even if nobody could ever know you did. Take one photo, maybe none. And if you only want the trophy, be honest about it, and spare the seat for someone who'd sing the second verse.