Photo: Ramón Salinero
A few weeks ago we came across a couple of articles we found interesting.
The first was a study that claimed that going to a concert a couple of times a month is likely to increase your lifespan by about 9 years.
Going to a concert a couple of times a month is likely to increase your lifespan by about 9 years.
O2, press release
The second was a scientific explanation of why we're so fond of music from our teenage years.
Now we admit, we were very sceptical about the first, but the reasoning is something like this:
The findings came off the back of psychometric and heart-rate tests across a range of wellbeing activities — gig-going, yoga and dog walking among them. Going to a gig raised participants' feelings of wellbeing by 21%, with self-worth and closeness to others each up 25%, and mental stimulation up by 75% (O2's write-up of the study).
And since science has shown a direct link between wellbeing and longevity, they did a Hey Presto!
The second article was fascinating. It dove into the reasons for our fondness for the music of our teenage years and why we remain so fond of it even after going through multiple periods of change in music.
Turns out it has all to do with the reminiscence bump, a name for the phenomenon that we remember so much of our younger adult lives more vividly than other years, and these memories last well into our senescence.
The period between 12 and 22, in other words, is the time when you become you.
Slate
This phenomenon also explains the enduring popularity of some of today's biggest stars.
Now we here at Mobilitus thought:
- We have a huge events database
- We can map artist popularity to years (for a few decades)
- We can map those formative years for people and see if any of the artists popular in those years are playing anywhere near you
So we did. And the results were uncanny.
We tried this ourselves and got very excited about the gigs we found for ourselves.
We had people test this and got very excited about how excited they got - even the ones that said "I'm not your target audience, I don't really go to concerts. .... Although I found one that I got tickets to...".
So we added some spit and polish and now it's your turn.
Go ahead, try it out. You'll have fun and live longer. It's a win win.