Digital photography

Many venues and promoters simply don't want to pay for photographers any more. Why? Because 'my mate/that guy/my nan has a big camera'. It's a shame but it's true and it means a lot of hard working guys have had to retreat into weddings etc, regardless of their talent. This I admit isn't the direct fault of antisocial crowd photographers, but it certainly doesn't help!

How comes you can't film or take pictures in a cinema? Surely you paid for the experience and you want to share it? Even neglecting the issue of copyright, it's just plain antisocial! I despair when I'm actually lucky enough to watch a gig and some prat in front of me decides to show me most of it via his camera screen. Its invasive and distracting (two things a professional photographer is payed NOT to be). It's not really very respectful of the act, either. They're there to perform for you, in that moment. Not for your Facebook buddies. I

If you want to practice, or actually start taking pictures at events legitimately, just ask the promoter or the venue. You'll be surprised.

In my opinion, gigs are brilliant places to watch live music. But taking pictures of the band throughout is just lame and shows you're not really invested in the performance.

I understand taking a memento, but documenting the performance is being done for you by someone else who is payed to do it, and in all likelihood is in a better position to do so. You wouldn't take a bomber jacket with you, stand on the door and refuse people entry just because it's your hobby or you're trying to become a doorman.

You're conflating so much here. First and foremost. Deal with it! It's the reality of technological advancement.
This is in the same line as all Photographers whining that stock Photography "took away" from their work.
BULLSHIT. Photographers became the lowest common denominators themselves. They created that market and made it borderline useless, live with it. To claim that something as innocuous as hundreds of people at a gig taking pics (I fucking despise it, that's why I barge to the front) has somehow forced Promoters/musicians to stop hiring Photographers is a false premise to detract from the fact that Photographers embraced technology like a teat and sucked it dry before they even knew what lay further down the line.

Don't dump "hard working guys" into it. Those hard working guys are the same guys that were outselling each other when the stock Photo market bloomed and then all of a sudden, each pic was worth 5p. I WAS one of those guys, and now I'm living with the shitty consequences. The Professional Photo world made its bed, and now it doesn't want to sleep in it.

As for copyright, a gig you pay to go see live. One filmed and dumped on youtube doesn't compare. A movie filmed and dumped online, you can watch on your fuck off massive TV at home. The comparison of the two with a baseline argument that it's "experience" you're sharing is plain ass bollocks. It's not. If you want to share the experience of going to a movie, why don't you film a dark room with people crunching around you. You're sharing content from a movie, not experience.

Actually, and I mean this in the nicest of ways, your whole argument is a personal rather then objective attack on people taking pics with phones at a gig. What the fuck did you expect? Seriously, if people take pics at a gruesome traffic accident and have no moral problem posting that online, you really think they'll give a shit doing the same during a gig. Cameras have been around for yonks, and so have the people that used them during gigs, they were just expensive. Now it's cheap and some musicians are suddenly angry that people aren't "listening" to them at gigs. You can't expect stage music to stay the same forever, move along with it or you'l be left behind. Once people experience a convenience, there is NO way they will go back to life without it.