Phish Friday: An Open Letter to Phish and Red Light Management
(aka We Need a High-Quality Paid Webcast for Phish Concerts)

I definitely felt I made some good points and did my research, but I was honestly taken aback at the response — both in terms of commentary and site traffic — that this post generated. Also, while it specifically addresses Phish and their fan base, I think there are aspects of my arguments that could be made for any number of large and mid-tier touring acts out there today.

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Here’s a brief intro:

After witnessing the evolving and ever-expanding online activity surrounding Phish’s recent reunion tour, I’m now thoroughly convinced that the Phish fan base is primed and ready for a high-quality and paid live video stream for the band’s next tour. If done properly and in innovative Phish fashion, it could create an untapped revenue stream for the band while allowing more Phish fans to engage with the band’s music – in particular those fans that can’t make it out to every show on tour.

Given the band’s recent history of wanting to scale down their in-house operations, I could see why you might think that a large-scale paid webcast would not be worth the large investment and effort it most certainly would require. But it’d be wrong to think so. There are some very compelling reasons why this should happen now and why Phish is the band to do it.
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Come join the conversation at Live Music Blog.

Live Music 2.0: Concerts and the Social Web

Here’s a brief intro:

Over the past few years, as this whole web 2.0 thing has really grown and progressed, we’ve seen a number of new sites launch that are specifically geared towards live music fans on the web. In a sense, all of them exist to help fans track and follow their favorite touring bands/artists in a variety of ways, but with a focus on their live shows rather than their studio output (which is amply covered by a slew of Music 2.0 sites and services).

While a lot of these sites have not yet emerged into the larger music business landscape, there’s no doubt in my mind that web technologies in general will continue to affect and disrupt the live music space, as they’ve already been doing quite drastically with the recording industry. Back when I was able to dedicate more of my free time to Live Music Blog, I was really interested in exploring this space in depth. Although we have occasionally posted about some of these sites — mentioning iLike.com and ShowClix or talking up the latest feature from JamBase — we’ve never really focused on them directly as a key topic. We’d like to change that. Since we are a site dedicated to live music, it only makes sense to look at the related web services and sites that serve all of US as a community of fans. I’d like to finally re-visit my original idea and dig a bit deeper into all the sites and services that form what we call “Live Music 2.0.”

More (and much more to follow) over at Live Music Blog.