Cool to see my favorite band discussed here. One of my passion projects for the past 13 years has been running Phishin' [1], a free, legal, open source [2] website and API for discovering and streaming their music as recorded by the audience.
Thanks for your work on Phish.in! I’ve used it a lot over the years.
Not sure if you remember this, but I used to run phishtrackstats.com and you let me integrate my api with phish.in. That was a big deal for me at the time.
Thank you! I was actually hoping the original article would get into the Shakedown "economy" that surrounds Phish and other jam bands. Not just the nitrous part, but people selling grilled cheeses, burritos, single cans of Heady Topper and unlicensed merch. Like what kind of numbers they actually do, how do they secure their spot, how do they deal with competition, are they hopping on other bands' tours, how many are Phans vs just there to make a buck, what does their typical non-tour life look like etc
It's wild how it pops up and disappears. Well not completely disappears because I went back the next day after a show and there was balloon debris and trash littered everywhere.
I have a friend who has seen 100+ shows and he knows people whose identity and lifestyle is following the tour. They scrap to make ends meet and live on the road. A contingent of shakedown merchants fit that profile. Of course, some are there just to make money and don't see the shows. And some probably take turns running the booth while their clan is is at the show that night
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?
Sadly, I've never seen Phish in concert, but I have seen Trey Anastasio and his band at the Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa. It was mind blowing how perfect and complex the music was! My wife enjoyed the band immensely, even though she's not a fan of that genre.
IMO, Phish and solo Trey are a kind of prog/jaze band, who jams out because the music flows in a long play type of way. (It's so good, where do you stop?)
So while Phish undoubtedly has fewer fans than Madonna, the ticket revenue per fan is way higher because fans loyally attend multiple shows. Not since the Grateful Dead has a band built a following as loyal as Phish. And like the Grateful Dead, Phish merchandising is a big business as fans gobble up Phish t-shirts, baby-onesies, and hats.
Yes saw that but no suggestion that perhaps consciously or subconsciously they followed the Dead's template since the article focuses on their business model
Good article. I’ve been seeing them since 2009 and their operation is fascinating. Everything is planned, structured, coordinated and optimized, so the music can be chaotic.
I’ve seen them 80 times (which isn’t even that much in the community), and have had many moments where I thought I might be over it. Is all the expense and time worth it? A four night run (much less 13) is exhausting. I’ll never stop though. It’s as much about a familiar ritual as seeking new experiences.
It is said that nobody hates Phish fans more than other Phish fans. When you fly halfway across the country just to stand next to drunk people talking all night (“chompers”), it’s hard to disagree.
I think a key part of their shtick is random variable reward. Not every show will be a banger, but there are enough legendary moments that there can be a feeling of chasing great shows, songs and moments. Like Pokemon pretty much.
As a musician I realized that it’s impossible to control whether a show will be great. Even Phish can’t fully control that, thus the random variable reward is incidental. Although, they say there’s no such thing as a bad Phish show.
Phish is the greatest band of all time and if you haven't attended a show I sincerely feel you are missing out, regardless of what your musical taste is.
If you play an instrument, or have ever played in a band, you'll definitely appreciate the show they put on.
Besides the band’s success in carving their own niche, I’m equally surprised by the intricacy of the economy that enables Phish and other traveling shows to be successful.
There are many specialists required to make it happen. Roadies who travel with the artists. Arenas (with their often billionaire owners). Security and hospitality staff. Vendors in the arenas selling food, drinks, and merch. Vendors outside the shows selling bootleg merch, street food, alcohol, and other illicit goods in the parking lots.
There’s a lot happening every night to make the whole thing as fun as it is.
> Phish doesn’t make money by selling music. They make money by selling live music
Let’s be intellectually honest here, probably the majority of tickets are sold to people who are at best casual fans of the music but are seeking a temporary autonomous zone in which to consume drugs. That’s the real product. I make no moral judgment here about that, but any discussion of this band without any serious mention of the drug culture is inherently dishonest.
Cool to see my favorite band discussed here. One of my passion projects for the past 13 years has been running Phishin' [1], a free, legal, open source [2] website and API for discovering and streaming their music as recorded by the audience.
[1] https://phish.in [2] https://github.com/jcraigk/phishin
Thanks for your work on Phish.in! I’ve used it a lot over the years.
Not sure if you remember this, but I used to run phishtrackstats.com and you let me integrate my api with phish.in. That was a big deal for me at the time.
Yes! Good to hear from you :)
Thanks for your service! I’ve spent many hours enjoying it.
The business of the Phish shakedown is an interesting read too. Ice cold fatties..
https://www.villagevoice.com/inside-the-nitrous-mafia-an-eas...
Thank you! I was actually hoping the original article would get into the Shakedown "economy" that surrounds Phish and other jam bands. Not just the nitrous part, but people selling grilled cheeses, burritos, single cans of Heady Topper and unlicensed merch. Like what kind of numbers they actually do, how do they secure their spot, how do they deal with competition, are they hopping on other bands' tours, how many are Phans vs just there to make a buck, what does their typical non-tour life look like etc
It's wild how it pops up and disappears. Well not completely disappears because I went back the next day after a show and there was balloon debris and trash littered everywhere.
I have a friend who has seen 100+ shows and he knows people whose identity and lifestyle is following the tour. They scrap to make ends meet and live on the road. A contingent of shakedown merchants fit that profile. Of course, some are there just to make money and don't see the shows. And some probably take turns running the booth while their clan is is at the show that night
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.
Face value is arbitrary and has nothing to do with the real value of the ticket.
Yes, but it has everything to do with the value not being extracted by middle-men who provide questionable value in the whole process.
It's not artificially inflated if people are willing to buy them. If people are scalping them, Ticketmaster isn't charging enough.
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.
Parent isn't suggesting price controls in any way.
Makes me think of King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard which I saw for the first time in the Bay Area last year.
Opposite of Phish, I believe they live stream all concerts for free on YouTube.
Yeah the live stream prices are absurd.
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 have an advance copy and it is soooo good.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/sharing-in-the-groove-the-untol...
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?
Yes to both.
Sadly, I've never seen Phish in concert, but I have seen Trey Anastasio and his band at the Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa. It was mind blowing how perfect and complex the music was! My wife enjoyed the band immensely, even though she's not a fan of that genre.
IMO, Phish and solo Trey are a kind of prog/jaze band, who jams out because the music flows in a long play type of way. (It's so good, where do you stop?)
Sadly? They play all the time and aren't likely to die anytime soon. Catch them this spring or summer. And yeah, calling them prog is pretty accurate.
Surprised no nod to their following the path that their heroes blazed (Grateful Dead)
The Dead are explicitly mentioned :
So while Phish undoubtedly has fewer fans than Madonna, the ticket revenue per fan is way higher because fans loyally attend multiple shows. Not since the Grateful Dead has a band built a following as loyal as Phish. And like the Grateful Dead, Phish merchandising is a big business as fans gobble up Phish t-shirts, baby-onesies, and hats.
Yes saw that but no suggestion that perhaps consciously or subconsciously they followed the Dead's template since the article focuses on their business model
The Dead's template started as going on tour, selling LSD until it ran out
Good article. I’ve been seeing them since 2009 and their operation is fascinating. Everything is planned, structured, coordinated and optimized, so the music can be chaotic.
I’ve seen them 80 times (which isn’t even that much in the community), and have had many moments where I thought I might be over it. Is all the expense and time worth it? A four night run (much less 13) is exhausting. I’ll never stop though. It’s as much about a familiar ritual as seeking new experiences.
It is said that nobody hates Phish fans more than other Phish fans. When you fly halfway across the country just to stand next to drunk people talking all night (“chompers”), it’s hard to disagree.
I think a key part of their shtick is random variable reward. Not every show will be a banger, but there are enough legendary moments that there can be a feeling of chasing great shows, songs and moments. Like Pokemon pretty much.
As a musician I realized that it’s impossible to control whether a show will be great. Even Phish can’t fully control that, thus the random variable reward is incidental. Although, they say there’s no such thing as a bad Phish show.
They're way is the complete opposite of Tool, probably why Tool lands up taking decades to release albums.
Phish is the greatest band of all time and if you haven't attended a show I sincerely feel you are missing out, regardless of what your musical taste is.
If you play an instrument, or have ever played in a band, you'll definitely appreciate the show they put on.
I forgot about Priceonomics. Seems like the pivot from being just a blog to something more substantial left whatever this version it was in the wake.
Seen Phish many times.
Besides the band’s success in carving their own niche, I’m equally surprised by the intricacy of the economy that enables Phish and other traveling shows to be successful.
There are many specialists required to make it happen. Roadies who travel with the artists. Arenas (with their often billionaire owners). Security and hospitality staff. Vendors in the arenas selling food, drinks, and merch. Vendors outside the shows selling bootleg merch, street food, alcohol, and other illicit goods in the parking lots.
There’s a lot happening every night to make the whole thing as fun as it is.
> Phish doesn’t make money by selling music. They make money by selling live music
Let’s be intellectually honest here, probably the majority of tickets are sold to people who are at best casual fans of the music but are seeking a temporary autonomous zone in which to consume drugs. That’s the real product. I make no moral judgment here about that, but any discussion of this band without any serious mention of the drug culture is inherently dishonest.
So, HN meetup at the Manchester shows this summer?
phish's annual nye run at msg is a must see!
1 for 3, 2 for 5
numbers go 0 1 2, 3 four 5, silly goose
(I don't know what this is supposed to mean)
It's the price of the beers in the parking lot before the concert. (or at least used to be.)
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