Interesting article about music, fans and how technology enables their communities. About how fans use of tech promotes and even shapes the content being generated.

Music, because of its seemingly infinite ways of being interpreted, is an emotional product. Music makes us laugh, it makes us cry, it makes us feel; but most importantly, music connects people. Think of your closest friends and odds are they share similar musical tastes as you. Maybe you’ve even met some of your friends as a result of your love of the same type of music. In other words, music creates community.

Specifically in the case of Phish the author talks about how early adopters of technology have pushed the band into providing a service they didnt even know their fans wanted. The LivePhish.com service, for example, has been around since early 2000.

Phish, too, has been at the forefront of “community-based” technology and the fans are able to influence how the band uses technology. The band created LivePhish.com earlier this decade, where fans can purchase high-quality audio of that night’s concert for a low price, because the community (especially those who weren’t able to attend a specific concert) was clamoring for the band to use the Web.

Very interesting interpretation on the communities surrounding bands and how they relate to other minority communities and their affect on the mainstream.

General society can learn about culture as a whole from the bands’ followers – from how group think works, to how messages spread and how economies will arise within groups. In our society, we’ve seen time and again how the minority drives the majority until the majority embraces the minority. It comes incrementally, like women’s suffrage or civil rights for blacks or the current gay rights movement. Social networks are now straddling the line between minority and majority. There just needs to be some push, and it’s happening.

via What Twitter and Facebook Can Learn From Phish.