Last night, I attended (watched) Jung Kyung Ho's first online fan meeting through his Youtube Channel. As I was watching, I can't stop thinking that if only COVID-19 didn't happen, then the Philippines will surely have a lot of scheduled concerts and fan meets.
NCT Dream's concert in Manila was the last physical concert that I have attended. Although there were already some cases of the virus that time, the concert still pushed through. Of course, with safety precautions. Almost all attendees have face masks. And before entering the venue, you need to have your temperature checked and hands were sanitized.
With this uncertainty we're experiencing right now, we don't even have the idea when will the concert industry be back to its normal place. And when it does, I guess we have to deal with the "new normal" for the concert scenes.
More online concerts and fan meets
Since we don't know yet when will all of these be back to normal, we can expect that there will be less (to no) live concerts. Instead, more online concerts and fan meets will be held.
During Globe's Kmmunity anniversary, they also had free online events - KCONTACT 2020 and GOT7 Park Jinyoung Meet and Greet. During the meet and greet, there were some lucky fans who were able to play virtually with Jinyoung. We also got to hear Jinyoung's covers.
But not all online concerts and fan meets are free though. I can still remember when SM Entertainment announced that they will be having a series of paid online concert. Although it's a paid concert, a lot of fans still attended. One example is Super Junior's online concert. They gathered more than 123,000 fans to watch it. Donghae mentioned in their concert that he didn't imagine that he will be performing a show this way (online).
Although virtual experiences can't be compared to live experiences, it is still a good thing to experience these online events because it gives us something to look forward to in times like this.
Will there be live concerts and fan meets soon?
Yes. I believe that there will be live concerts and fan meets soon, although I do not know when. Maybe a few months after mass gatherings are allowed? But we can expect some changes in these live events such as...
Fewer seats and standing tickets to be opened
One of the things that this pandemic has imposed us is to have some social distancing. I can still remember when I attended TWICE's concert. It was a full house. Those in the standing area barely even move. Once the concerts and fan meets are allowed again, I believe there will be less tickets to be sold so that we can still have a little "social distancing". Which means that it will really be harder to get tickets (this is really sad T_T). And because of less tickets to be sold, this leads to my next point...
An increase on the ticket prices
Since there will be fewer seats yet the expenses are still the same (or might even increase like flight tickets), it is expected that there will be an increase on the price tickets so that the producers will still have profit. I guess we really need to save more.
We might experience less perks that involves physical contact
On fan meetings, fans expect a lot of perks especially hi-touch, photo ops, game interactions. Since this requires physical contact with the artists, I think they will have lesser events like this for the safety of the artists and the fans. The perks that will probably remain is the sound check and send-off since there are no physical contact involved here.
Thoughts as a fan
Turn off the lights in your room and bring out those lightsticks. It will somehow make you feel like you were really there. Besides, some of us are used to with being #TeamBahay. I'm just so thankful with the technology nowadays because it's easier to get in touch with our faves.
Online events will never have the same feels of the live events. But since we are still under this pandemic (which I hope ends soon), we need to cope up with these things. Besides, the music never stopped. Our faves are still working hard to give us new music. We just have to wait a little more before we can meet them again in person.
