When liking music starts to feel like work

I love music, but lately it feels like music doesn’t love me back.

Not in a dramatic way. In a bureaucratic way.

I love the part where you hear a song for the first time and it rearranges something in you. I love falling into artists slowly, accidentally, obsessively. I love discovering someone through a live set, a late night playlist, a friend insisting “no trust me, listen to this”.

What I hate is everything that comes after.

Because liking music now comes with admin.

You need alarms, presale codes, newsletters, screenshots, group chats, back-up plans and emotional resilience. You need to be fast but also strategic. Fair but also ruthless. You need to decide months or years in advance who you’ll be watching and how much you’ll be willing to spend to prove that you cared early enough.

Sometimes I miss the version of me who just… went.

I remember when gigs felt impulsive. When you could hear that someone was playing and think, why not. When tickets lived in record shops. When the biggest stress was whether you’d get a decent spot, not whether you’d get in at all.

Now the hardest part of a concert isn’t the crowd or the sound system. It’s getting a ticket without feeling scammed, punished, or vaguely humiliated by a virtual queue.

You show up on time. You do everything right. You still lose.

And then, minutes later, you see the same tickets reappear online for four times the price. £70 becomes £350 if you’re lucky. Sometimes they can’t even be transferred properly, which turns the whole thing into a strange trust exercise with strangers on the internet.

At that point it stops feeling like demand and starts feeling like exploitation.

I didn’t fall in love with music because it was exclusive.

I fell in love with it through artists who felt intimate before they felt big. Through shows that felt slightly chaotic, a bit sweaty, deeply human. Through nights where you didn’t take many photos because you were too busy being there.

Artists like Jamie xx, whose music feels like a shared secret even when you’re surrounded by thousands of people. Or RÜFÜS DU SOL, whose shows feel emotional and immersive rather than performative, even at scale. Or Lorde, who once felt like she was singing directly to your bedroom.

Even Fred again.., who built his entire world around the idea of connection and community, now sits at the centre of a resale ecosystem that feels anything but human. I found myself writing to his team not as a fan asking for special treatment, but as someone genuinely confused about how fairness disappears so quickly once money enters the picture.

That’s the part that hurts. Not missing the show, but missing the logic.

Then there’s the other side of it.

The side where concerts stop being about music and start being about visibility.

With artists like Harry Styles, attendance has become cultural participation. You don’t just go because you love the songs. You go because everyone else will. Because not going feels like missing a global moment. Because being there means being seen.

I’ve overheard it too many times to ignore it. People openly admitting they don’t really listen to him, but “it’s Harry, obviously you go”. At that point the concert isn’t about sound or lyrics or feeling. It’s about presence. Proof. Posting.

The same thing happens with Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. Incredible artists, undeniably. But their shows now live somewhere between music and mass ritual. You attend because absence feels louder than taste.

Music becomes secondary to access.

What I really miss is freedom.

I miss deciding late. I miss saying yes without planning my entire year around it. I miss the idea that music could interrupt life instead of being something you have to schedule with military precision.

Now, everything is locked in advance. Dates, budgets, expectations. You commit to a version of yourself you might not recognise by the time the concert actually happens.

And still, despite all this, I keep trying.

Because when live music works, it still works completely. It still cuts through everything. It still reminds you why you cared enough to refresh a page a hundred times in the first place.

But something is off.

Liking music shouldn’t feel like labour.
It shouldn’t feel like a competition.
It shouldn’t reward people who want to profit more than people who want to listen.

It’s starting to feel the same way about eating out, fashion, culture, even travelling.
Things that once felt spontaneous now require planning, strategy, and endurance.

I still love music.
I just wish the system would stop making that love feel like work.

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