Fifty years on, Grateful Dead tour breaks box-office records | Music | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/16/grateful-dead-tour-breaks-box-office-records
As forerunners of the hippy-capitalist ethos, the band pioneered practices that prefigured social networking and the modern structure of the music business. The emphasis on creating a community of fans, wrote Deadhead management consultant Barry Barnes in Everything I Know About Business I Learned from The Grateful Dead, presaged the practices of Facebook, Google, Uber or Amazon that have shifted market power towards the customer.
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As masters of “strategic improvisation” – the ability to plan, act and make adjustments in real time – Deadheads created an entire culture, complete with wardrobe, foods, ethics and rituals that existed beyond the sales of recorded music. Barnes believes the band was stunned that, even 20 years after Garcia’s death, demand could still be so strong.
Part of the issue for Deadheads, says David Meerman Scott, author of Real-Time Marketing & PR and Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, is that tour promoters ignored the community organisation component of the Grateful Dead’s operation. In the past fans would have to apply for tickets through the band’s office, sending postal orders, but for this reunion thousands of tickets went on sale to Chicago Bears fans and were later touted by scalpers.
Whatever the mis-steps, the concerts prove the enduring power of the Deadhead tribe. “People wanted to see their friends. They recorded the shows and traded their tapes. The band controlled the tickets and set the prices that fans had to jump through hoops to acquire. Because they had that social network, when they announced they’d play again, everybody thought, ‘Hey, let’s get together and have a party’.”