Grateful Dead Always Knew How To Connect With Fans
from the but-of-course dept
For many, many years, the classic example we'd use of a band who knew how to really connect with its fans (and give them a reason to buy) was The Grateful Dead -- who were, for years, the highest grossing band around, despite encouraging widespread sharing and trading of their taped shows (which they made easy for fans to tape). So while this article is really nothing new, it's nice to see this article about the band highlight some of how the band handled these things (thanks to Dave W for sending this in). While the band has always been very aggressive (too much so, in my opinion) in trying to enforce its copyrights over any kind of commercial use, it basically ignored them for non-commercial use:ODDLY ENOUGH, THE Dead's influence on the business world may turn out to be a significant part of its legacy. Without intending to--while intending, in fact, to do just the opposite--the band pioneered ideas and practices that were subsequently embraced by corporate America. One was to focus intensely on its most loyal fans. It established a telephone hotline to alert them to its touring schedule ahead of any public announcement, reserved for them some of the best seats in the house, and capped the price of tickets, which the band distributed through its own mail-order house. If you lived in New York and wanted to see a show in Seattle, you didn't have to travel there to get tickets--and you could get really good tickets, without even camping out. "The Dead were masters of creating and delivering superior customer value," Barry Barnes, a business professor at the H. Wayne Huizenga School of Business and Entrepreneurship at Nova Southeastern University, in Florida, told me. Treating customers well may sound like common sense. But it represented a break from the top-down ethos of many organizations in the 1960s and '70s. Only in the 1980s, faced with competition from Japan, did American CEOs and management theorists widely adopt a customer-first orientation.The article goes on to talk about how lots of people are just now starting to look back at how The Dead ran their business to understand how to run modern customer-focused businesses today -- ones that recognize when it makes sense to let people do things that legally could be stopped (if not in reality) and how to take advantage of those situations. It's a good read.
As Barnes and other scholars note, the musicians who constituted the Dead were anything but naive about their business. They incorporated early on, and established a board of directors (with a rotating CEO position) consisting of the band, road crew, and other members of the Dead organization. They founded a profitable merchandising division and, peace and love notwithstanding, did not hesitate to sue those who violated their copyrights. But they weren't greedy, and they adapted well. They famously permitted fans to tape their shows, ceding a major revenue source in potential record sales. According to Barnes, the decision was not entirely selfless: it reflected a shrewd assessment that tape sharing would widen their audience, a ban would be unenforceable, and anyone inclined to tape a show would probably spend money elsewhere, such as on merchandise or tickets. The Dead became one of the most profitable bands of all time.
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Filed Under: business models, connect with fans, grateful dead, sharing
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An example to kill... for
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Basic Assumption
It's like busking. Some people will walk past, others will stand and listen without paying, others will pay a little and a few may pay quite a lot. Your strategy has to be to move people "up the categories". That means that actually it is a gain to you when you convert a "walker past" (someone who hears you on the radio) into a "stay and listen but don't pay" (a file sharer) because the next step for that person takes them into a paying category.
Of course if someone stands next to you with a tape recorder, doesn't pay, and then sets up selling the recording on the next street you might get upset - but with a little thought you might realise that even that is not a loss and could be a gain.
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Greybeard
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May I point out that Mettalica was famous for allowing their fans to record their shows, and would sell specific seats (often with power and everything provided) just for that purpose. Yet, we all know how they were later crucified for fighting against the scourge that was Napster.
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Re:
Nor are high quality recordings a threat to real live shows, and it seems allowing them to be created and distributed only allows easier creation of new fans who will eagerly await any opportunity to go to a live show, meaning you've just created more demand for a scarce product with one that is less scarce.
Even better if that less scarce product became non-scarce and could be infinitely copied and shared across the world, no?
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Re:
Have you heard those "poor quality" bootlegs? 'Cause they aren't so poor. In fact, the Dead allowed you to plug directly into their sound board, so you could make tapes that were as good in quality as anything you could buy.
THe fact is that the article has it right. The Dead, instead of making their fans feel like the enemy, made them feel like family. And the fans supported the band like family, in a way and to an extent that most other bands can only fantasize about.
Negativland did a similar "connect with fans" thing, and their fans supported them so much that when the band faced obliteration because of that U2 lawsuit, the fans themselves directly financed the production of their next album.
Music is an intensely personal and emotional thing, people connect with it in a way that that is personal and emotional. The mainstream record labels make the mistake, and you hear it all the time in their rhetoric, of considering fans "consumers," when what the fans what to be is family. Bands that realize this, and treat their fans as family instead of consumers, have always been immensely rewarded by their fans. And always will be.
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Re: TAM
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Re: Re: TAM
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- Care to elaborate ? For example, what exactly was incorrect?
You simple minded and childish "no it's not" response is getting quite old.
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Not in my experience. DeadHeads were among the first to adopt portable digital recordings and many of those were later made available in FLAC format. And, even before digital, people would have portable reel-to-reel deck. As someone else pointed out, you could often plug into the soundboard, as close to a first-generation source as you could ever get for a live recording.
So, between FLAC, MiniDisc, DAT and other high-quality portable recording gear, Grateful Dead tapes were among the best live recordings out there, often better than official live recordings from other bands.
OTOH, what it did do is create a rabid fan base and was a strategy followed by other Dead-tribute bands like Phish.
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Profit
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Dead as Early Onset Capitalists
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Re: Dead as Early Onset Capitalists
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2) They took a lot of LSD.
Connect with the fans? They _were_ the fans they were playing to.
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" Sort of a classic re-jigging of history to try to make it look like something it was not. In the end, the Greatful Dead did all of those things without giving their products away. Poor quality "approved" bootlegs were still no replacement for albums or real live shows. "
Actually all the "Live Shows" that I have that you insinuate are "Poor quality bootlegs" are actually recordings made from the mixing table and are properly mastered.
Example :
Grateful Dead
02/01/70
The Warehouse
New Orleans LA
Lineage: SBD>MSR>C>DAT>CD
SBD stands for Sound Board. Good Try.
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driven that train hi on cocaine TAM you know
trouble ahead , trouble behind
and you know that notion just crossed my miiiind
and you know that notion just crossed myyyyy miiind
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is this fair use?
1. Jerry would have wanted it that way, and
2. I think.. (I may be wrong).. have a right to listen to that music in any medium I see fit.
Am I correct in this assumption?
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Re: is this fair use?
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Re: Re: is this fair use?
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Most musicians now must "pay to play"
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Dead right
This is true. Whatever you give, people always want more. The Dead allowed taping but very strictly enforced their rights when it came to merchandise and the commercial exploitation of their music. Many fans complained. So it goes.
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Re: Dead right
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Lasnick’s Maw
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Re: Lasnick�s Maw
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If only a few more would take such a practical and objective view of their business decisions, perhaps there wouldn't be so much fodder for this blog. There are options aside from copyright maximalism and give it away and pray. Not even a middle ground; just sane, logical and profitable options.
I wish this subtle point received a little more focus a little more often.
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If (someone) only had a brain...
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Re: Lasnik's Maw
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Re: Lasnik's Maw
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Not just a band
Their concerts weren't unique just because they played their songs differently every time making new jams during each set - the fans and the environment they created was the actual highlight of the concerts and the band knew that and developed it.
Its quite evident in "The Grateful Dead Movie," the concert movie produced by Jerry recorded from about 3 different concerts. Watching the film is great because you don't just get the experience of watching the band play on stage, because they had camera men all over the venue, just talking to fans, watching them dance, and doing all the things a fan would do at the concert - like sitting outside in line for tickets and going to the concession stand.
All that was the beauty of the dead - they didn't just play music, they created an entire social environment based on following them around the country, making their dedicated fans feel like they're part of a movement.
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