Is Phish a Great Band?- grantland article

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Let's say it's 50 years in the future, and you're trying to figure out how and why pop music has arrived at its present permutation. Let's also say that recorded music still exists, but no longer as a product that artists attempt to sell. Like other forms of devalued currency, recordings have flooded the market to the point of virtual worthlessness. But music fans are still willing to pay to hear a version of a song that doesn't exist yet, and will only ever exist once. Because of this economic development, bands spend a lot less time making albums and devote the majority of their energy to honing their live shows. Over time, people gradually stop talking about fixed versions of songs and begin evaluating bands on their ability to perform and refresh their body of work. This creates a new paradigm for how we talk about music — pop historians start rating the Dead over the Beatles as the best rock band ever. Music is perceived less like film and more like theater or sports — as a venue for live events that lose their essential appeal if they're not viewed in the moment.

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I obviously don't know for certain if this scenario will happen, but I won't be surprised if it does. As a person who's long been obsessed with albums, I hope they never go away. But I can't make a practical financial argument for most bands to continue making them, other than as an advertisement for the live show. While recorded music isn't exactly on the verge of extinction yet, it has been perpetually teetering on the precipice of insolvency since the turn of the century. But live music endures — it can't be mass-produced, diluted, or "shared" in a digital realm. If artists no longer have the means to make records, the concert stage will become their primary canvas.

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If this is how things play out, our theoretical rock critic in the year 2063 will look back at the late '90s as a turning point — record sales peaked, Napster made file-sharing accessible to millions, and a band called Phish presented an alternative model in which memorable live experiences mean at least as much as iconic songs, and high-grossing tours measure an artist's reach as well as chart-topping albums do. This is how Phish is "good." It could soon be how all music is good.

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