Home to many of the music industry’s greatest stars, such as Grateful Dead and Tupac Shakur, the Bay Area is a hotspot for live music. Concert attendance jumped after the pandemic, with LiveNation estimating a 24% increase from 2021 to 2022 nationwide. With young people leading the charge, social media has fueled live music’s rising popularity.

Junior Jacob Suh, who recently attended the It’s All a Blur Tour headlining rappers Drake and 21 Savage, sees a direct connection between people’s posts on the internet and others’ desire to attend concerts. “When they see multiple posts about certain concerts, it’ll make (them) want to go to join in — be within the status quo,” he said. “(Being able to) post can be a big part of why (someone) goes to a concert.”

As an avid concertgoer, sophomore Gwen Domine sees this newfound interest in concerts as a product of a viral trend. “(Taylor Swift’s) Eras Tour became such a trend on social media this summer that all of a sudden, everybody wanted to go,” she said. “Social media kind of blew the whole thing up even more.”

Senior Siena Tacy also watched the Eras Tour blow up on social media. She, however, attributes this boom to a resurrection of “2010s fangirl culture” and believes the movement is only amplified by social media. “Fangirl culture is this obsessive culture that comes with big obsessions with artists,” Tacy said. “People think that, somehow, they’re connected to these artists and that they would look at them differently.”