Comment OCRS and sound board recordings. (Score 1) 395
Myself, my best friend, and a colleague spent most of 2003 working with the Grateful Dead (however they are now known simply as The Dead for legal/business reasons).
We pitched an idea to them in early 2003 that eventually came to be known as the 'Official Concert Recording Series' (OCRS) and allowed folks to buy any concert during that 2003 tour for about $25 -- not a bad deal for 3 hours of music.
There was some community backlash at the time to what we were trying to do -- the Dead weren't trying to stop tape traders at the shows, but they were trying to offer folks who are not in the uber-connected 'tape trader world' an opportunity to buy high-quality recordings of their shows that were official and sanctioned, as well as profiting from their music.
Tapers were still allowed, but those that wanted to show their support for the band, or wanted to buy a keepsake of their favorite concert that year could do it. All in all, we ended up being far more successful than any of us thought we would and it was a great experience for all involved...though I'll probably never do something like that again. :) I'm not even a Dead fan and (before that experience) I couldn't name you two songs by the Dead...I just thought it'd make a good story to tell my kids some day.
The moral of the story is that I don't believe at the end of the day that the online "free music" community that people tap into for some of the Dead's music takes away from people who want to buy music from the Dead -- in my experience, people wanted to buy concert CDs as keepsakes of their first show with their girlfriend or child, or as gifts for fellow Dead Heads.
We pitched an idea to them in early 2003 that eventually came to be known as the 'Official Concert Recording Series' (OCRS) and allowed folks to buy any concert during that 2003 tour for about $25 -- not a bad deal for 3 hours of music.
There was some community backlash at the time to what we were trying to do -- the Dead weren't trying to stop tape traders at the shows, but they were trying to offer folks who are not in the uber-connected 'tape trader world' an opportunity to buy high-quality recordings of their shows that were official and sanctioned, as well as profiting from their music.
Tapers were still allowed, but those that wanted to show their support for the band, or wanted to buy a keepsake of their favorite concert that year could do it. All in all, we ended up being far more successful than any of us thought we would and it was a great experience for all involved...though I'll probably never do something like that again.
The moral of the story is that I don't believe at the end of the day that the online "free music" community that people tap into for some of the Dead's music takes away from people who want to buy music from the Dead -- in my experience, people wanted to buy concert CDs as keepsakes of their first show with their girlfriend or child, or as gifts for fellow Dead Heads.
