Without intending to—while intending, in fact, to do just the opposite—the band pioneered ideas and practices that were subsequently embraced by corporate America. One was to focus intensely on its most loyal fans. It established a telephone hotline to alert them to its touring schedule ahead of any public announcement, reserved for them some of the best seats in the house, and capped the price of tickets, which the band distributed through its own mail-order house. If you lived in New York and wanted to see a show in Seattle, you didn’t have to travel there to get tickets—and you could get really good tickets, without even camping out.
via www.theatlantic.com
It's also interesting that the Dead chose to own a function of their business (selling tickets) that on first review would seem like something you'd want to out-source. And that's what happened in popular music the past thirty years; the selling of tickets has gradually been consolidated into bigger and bigger entities.
Amazingly, even in this year, 2010, the sucessors of the Grateful Dead still run a mail-order ticket operation, which is being used for the Furthur tour that's going on right now.
The Grateful Dead's decision to maintain control (or at least the credible thread of doing it themselves when negotiating with vendors) is reminiscent of Apple's desire to design their own hardware. Out-sourcing portions of one's business creates efficiencies, but also causes a deterioration of customer service, since good customer service is almost always about managing exceptions--and the efficiencies gained by out-sourcing are gained mostly by automating the routine scenarios.
