Yondr Believes Concertgoers Are Learning to Love Locking Up Smartphones — Even for a Three-Day ‘Over Yondr’ Festival

variety.com:

A.D. Amorosi Many music and comedy venue attendees know exactly what is meant when they hear the word “Yondr.” For some, the grey-and-green smartphone pouch with a magnetic lock is the pain-in-the-ass bag keeping them from their phones (and social accounts and recording apps) until after a live gig is over.

Others recognize the Yondr pouch as the best way for an artist to maintain control over their music or jokes without fear of bootlegging or having their punchlines exposed and leaked to the web — and are happy to watch a singer or a stand-up comedian without interference from a neighbor’s incessant phone use.With the announcement of the Over Yondr Festival in bucolic Greene County, New York June 24-26, the company that Graham Dugoni founded in 2014 has grown beyond its bag.

It’s a three-day camping and concert event with !!! and Sheer Mag where, as you might guess, audiences will be unable to use their phones for the entirety of the weekend.  (As always at Yondr-aided gigs, phone-use spaces are available for unlockings, away from the performances.) Yondr’s first big test run was a baker’s dozen of shows in Chicago in 2015 with comedian Dave Chappelle and promoter Live Nation (at the under-1,000 capacity Thalia Hall).

It’s come a long way: Dugoni says that, in April 2022, “Yondr will take care of about a million customers this month.”Dugoni starts his conversation about the creation of Yondr by saying that if you look around at people “not just in entertainment but education, and in day-to-day life, there is a sense that life is speeding up, and we’re running on the treadmill faster just to stay in the same place.