Yesterday, London’s public transit operator took action, with a social media campaign and posters on one line gently reminding riders who listen to music, play games, or make calls to use their headphones.
Many in Britain have long disdained the practice of playing music through a phone’s speakers in public as “sodcasting”.
In a June survey, about 70% of riders said they found headphone-less phone use “disruptive”.
“The only thing worse than being a slave to your own device and its incessant chatter is being forced to hear other people’s,” writer Hannah Ewens wrote in the Guardian.
The Liberal Democrats called this spring for a ban on loud music on public transport and strict enforcement of fines for “headphone dodgers”.
But London’s transit authority chose, with its campaign, to rely on an appeal to manners rather than the threat of penalty.
“It’s about getting them to think and be a little bit more considerate,” Emma Strain, the customer director of Transport for London, the transit authority, said in an interview.
Many riders may not notice that their noise is disruptive, Strain said, adding, “They’re often not thinking about others”.
Riders usually comply if asked to turn their music off, she noted.
If they don’t, they can be fined up to £1000 $2300) for playing music out loud and be asked to leave the train.
“Enforcement is a last resort,” the agency said in a statement by email.
London’s transit authorities are hardly alone in trying to respond to yowls of frustration from commuters.
The public transit operators in Massachusetts, the United States, and Toronto, Canada, have barred passengers from playing music without headphones, while Montreal’s strongly discourages doing so.
In the French city of Nantes, a man was fined €200 ($397) this year for making a call on a loudspeaker at a train station.
Ireland’s rail operator reminded people this month that they could be fined €100 for listening to music without headphones.
“This is definitely a growing issue,” Barry Kenny, the head of corporate communications for Irish Rail, wrote in an email.
He noted that although it is possible to fine customers, “our preference is to always resolve matters without having to do so”.
For some transit riders, disruption may be the goal, said Elijah Anderson, a professor of sociology and black studies at Yale University who has written extensively about race, civility, and negotiation in shared public spaces.
Playing music loudly from boom boxes in public is “an assault on civil society”, he said. But it’s also a way for people to assert their right to a public space, and a form of political resistance.
Headphone-less phone use, he said, may be the modern iteration.
“You’re claiming space,” Anderson said. “Some people find it obnoxious, but the person doing it is implying, ‘This is my music, and this is my right to play it like this.’”
William Hanson, an etiquette coach in London, said that the pointed, but mostly passive campaign felt distinctly British.
“We’re plotting that person’s slow and eventual painful deathbut we wouldn’t dare say anything.”
He is sceptical about how effective the posters may be.
To even notice them, he said, people would have to look up from their phones.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Amelia Nierenberg
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
