The Business of Phish (2013)

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

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?)

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 business of the Phish shakedown is an interesting read too. Ice cold fatties..

https://www.villagevoice.com/inside-the-nitrous-mafia-an-eas...

Surprised no nod to their following the path that their heroes blazed (Grateful Dead)

They're way is the complete opposite of Tool, probably why Tool lands up taking decades to release albums.

phish's annual nye run at msg is a must see!

1 for 3, 2 for 5

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