As someone who could reasonably be considered an expert in Phish, as well as someone who built their own indie business, I can confidently say no book, business, or entity influenced my business more than Phish. Phish is a business, but they are more accurately defined as a creative conduit for the four members to sustainably make music. Their goals were to work incredibly hard (both in front of an audience and away from them), grow sustainably, and perform live music. They, by and large, treat their fans right and focus on crafting incredible live experiences. Their interviews are gems for those pursuing creative work who are obsessed with process, intent, and improvement.
Their business changed drastically in 2009, when they came back from an extended hiatus. The business side of things had burned them out and they pared down their internal organization to ~3-4 people and outsourced most of it to some close friends (an external management team), so they could focus on the music and their families. Whereas in their first 20 years they were far more fan-friendly and even anti-consumerism (they regularly covered up the advertisements in hockey arenas when playing there), the band's business has since become far more profitable and extracting, though not necessarily to an obscene extreme. The band members have mostly removed themselves from the business side and focus on the creative - a role that lets them keep rolling, but sometimes at the cost of fan-friendliness. It's worth noting that they are incredibly philanthropic, and have donated immense money to environmental, educational, and drug-treatment efforts.
Overall they are a masterclass in running a well-balanced organization that is both a capitalistic business as well as a down-to-earth creative organization and I have no doubt each and every one of us could glean a lesson or two from the way they built their structure over years.
>the band's business has since become far more profitable and extracting, though not necessarily to an obscene extreme.
At this point, it is getting extreme. With ticket sales and couch tour (live streams of concerts you can pay for) they are absurdly rich. Their ticket prices have climbed to a crazy amount and they allow all the fuckery that ticketmaster is hated for. Phish is my favorite band of all time and I have completely stopped seeing them live. I hope they enjoy their money.
I would agree with you that as of late it has been bordering on excess, but comparing to the other large touring acts they're still cheaper. The most egregious thing has been leaning into platinum tickets, which Ticketmaster purports as a way to avoid scalping, but all it does is create an artificial scarcity that drives up false demand. For the last few years, there's rarely been a Phish concert where you couldn't find a face value ticket (or much cheaper) the day of the show despite every show selling out instantly. So it's all a facade designed to rent-seek the more wealthy fans, while keeping the less motivated fans away from the concert and encouraging people to buy up as many tickets as possible to use for trades, even if they have no intention of attending that concert.
I don't understand why world famous acts are expected to have cheap tickets. No one is saying the price of any other scarce/limited non-essential products or resources should have price controls.
I don't have an issue with high prices, in the general sense, I have an issue with artificially inflated prices via dark patterns and other unethical means, which Ticketmaster has built their entire business around.
As a customer who earns a tech salary, mostly I want to be able to go on the site, find the "best available" seats, and buy them. Done.
What Ticketmaster instead forces you to do is go through an artificial queuing system, lies to you about what's best available, has widely ranging dynamic pricing, doesn't allow you to purchase all seat classes available at any given moment and releases them randomly, and does all sorts of other horrid fuckery and at the end as an extra middle finger charges you a "convenience fee" for having you print your tickets yourself or scanning them from your phone after you went through the least convenient, pleasant, and reasonable process every to get overcharged for the tickets.
And let's be clear, we're talking about overcharging. The face value of a ticket can be high for a world-famous act. So let's say the face value of a typical seat is $250 for a concert. Ticketmaster will absolutely charge you $700 for that same ticket.
You're contradicting yourself here. You want tickets to be both cheaper and easier to buy.
They can't be both. The value of the ticket is just high. Either you pay in time, or money. Your enemy isn't ticketmaster, it's the 100,000 people who want to go to a 1,000 person venue.
I don't mind paying $700 if $700 is the face value of the ticket. You're acting like I'm against first-come, first-serve. I am not. I am fine with it. I'm fine waking up at 3AM to buy a ticket. What I'm not okay with are bots and bullshit.
Scalping is an after-the-fact action, which by the way Ticketmaster directly enables (they own Stubhub and have built-in scalping tools in their app). While I find scalping distasteful, that is not the reason why Ticketmaster's pricing and practices suck.
And just to complete myself sounding like a grumpy old man - just open ReListen App or Phish.in and choose any show from 1993-1997 and you'll get something 10x better.
I haven't been to a show in a long time but was obsessed as a young person. I heard some people I know were planning to go to Riviera Maya. I did not expect it to be cheap, but the prices were eye watering. It bummed me out.
I saw them last year live for the first time in over 20 years. I was surprised tickets were available and weren’t totally ridiculous.
We used to go see them a lot in the 90s. A friend was in the fan club and would always get a bunch of new years tickets, and some of those camping out festivals in Maine and New York.
I saw them at the sphere and it was crazy expensive. But I met people there that had gotten cheap tickets through a lottery that Phish had done to allow fans to access the show for a reasonable cost. I thought that was really cool.
You might enjoy my friend’s upcoming book (from St Martins Press in July) - Sharing in the Groove. Talks about the rise of the jam band explosion in the 90s - he interviewed artists, managers and more including Trey, John Popper so many…
I haven't kept up much over the last 15 years or so. What is the situation these days with ticket lotteries and the taping section? Are people still allowed to tape, and do they still do a lottery for tour runs?
Their business changed drastically in 2009, when they came back from an extended hiatus. The business side of things had burned them out and they pared down their internal organization to ~3-4 people and outsourced most of it to some close friends (an external management team), so they could focus on the music and their families. Whereas in their first 20 years they were far more fan-friendly and even anti-consumerism (they regularly covered up the advertisements in hockey arenas when playing there), the band's business has since become far more profitable and extracting, though not necessarily to an obscene extreme. The band members have mostly removed themselves from the business side and focus on the creative - a role that lets them keep rolling, but sometimes at the cost of fan-friendliness. It's worth noting that they are incredibly philanthropic, and have donated immense money to environmental, educational, and drug-treatment efforts.
Overall they are a masterclass in running a well-balanced organization that is both a capitalistic business as well as a down-to-earth creative organization and I have no doubt each and every one of us could glean a lesson or two from the way they built their structure over years.