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Phish to Sell Downloads of Concerts
zzyzx writes "Phish have a new system for distributing their music. At livephish.com they will be selling their soundboard concert recordings. Most 2-3 hour concerts will cost $10 to download in mp3 format, $13 to download in the lossless shn format. What makes this interesting is that they're putting no DRM on these files at all. How are they protecting themselves? One paragraph in their Faq: 'Live Phish Downloads relies on an honor system, and we ask that you do not abuse the unrestricted nature of these files. If you would like to see this type of delivery of shows continue and flourish, please respect our taping policy and don't abuse the system.'" The honor system has served them well in the past, what with allowing their fans to record their concerts while also selling both studio and live albums.
This is totally in the Grateful Dead tradition of viral marketing.
The Dead let people tape and trade their shows, but you couldn't sell them. The traders developed a barter system, and soundboard copies of shows were top dog in the barter system. You could get 3-4 non-soundboard shows for one soundboard.
So now Phish will provide people with REALLY high quality bootlegs of shows for $10 (I guess bootleg isn't really the right term). People will buy them. For certain. And this puts MORE Phish music out there, and makes people more likely to go to their concerts and buy their studio releases - and that is the real goal. They know people will copy and trade these shows for free - again - that is the goal. They just give anyone an easy way to get any concert for $10. That is a lot of value compared to checking bartering message boards and trying to come up with a valuable enough trade.
A smart business move by Phish. The Dead made their shows tradeable, and had more concert attendance in the 1980s and 1990s than any other band. They made a lot of cash from their shows, and from their merchandising.