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The Mockingbird Foundation is a non-profit organization founded by Phish fans in 1996 to generate charitable proceeds from the Phish community.
And since we're entirely volunteer – with no office, salaries, or paid staff – administrative costs are less than 2% of revenues! So far, we've distributed over $2 million to support music education for children – hundreds of grants in all 50 states, with more on the way.
Here's hoping Kevin Shapiro will one day take on the ultimate project, the entire Phish vault available as downloads and/or streaming. Fugazi have done/are doing this with their Fugazi Live series. Ian MacKaye is literally transferring old DAT tapes of every available Fugazi show onto his computer, even taking tapes made by fans where the band's own recordings aren't available, encoding them as 320kbps mp3's and selling them for $5 each or whatever above that you want to pay. When Phish finally hang it up, I'd love to see this sort of thing happen. I'd gladly pay $10/month to have access to ... THE VAULT.
As for all the anger about this service, I don't really get it. I'm not itching to sign up, but let's face it. Phish still let people tape and freely trade/download/stream those audience recordings, as long as no money is changing hands. I don't see them ever taking that away. That's a pretty sweet deal. And let's face it, some people buy the official soundboard downloads, but many more pirate them. This is a way for the band to offer high-quality soundboard recordings, albums, and archival releases on their own terms for the people who want to pay for such a service. If you don't want to pay, cool. Hit up bt.etree or PhishTracks and have a blast. If you want crisp, superbly mixed soundboard recordings, it's not unreasonable to expect to pay. They even throw in a free download for any show you attend. Again, pretty sweet deal.
That being said, bring back the most recent show as the featured show!