Bill Clinton delivered an electoral beat-down Pappy Bush after realizing that in a recession, the economy was the most important thing on voters minds. In this recession merchandise sales are the path to “jobdom” for today’s musical artist (“stardom” is ever-elusive). But there’s a lot of competition for fan’s dollars. Touring headliners have to sell alongside opening acts with less-expensive goods, and inside clubs selling their own swag across the bar.
The All Night Party takes this problem seriously, and studied the situation. Starting with our “SceneStore” at the Midpoint Music Festival, and continuing to shows by our affiliated artists, including mallory’s slammin’ release party, we put our market research and conclusions to the test. Here’s what we learned:
- When it comes to merch, more is more. All other things being equal, the band with merch covering the most different price points earns more than the band with less. In other words: you need items to sell for $1-9, not just $10 and $15.
- A strong merch table can generate more revenue for artists than cover charges or guarantees. This shocked us, but after loading merch tables with a wider range of choices at different prices, it was not unusual for touring bands to earn more at the merch table than the door!
- Fans prefer tangible things to intangible items. A download delivered on a throw-away card (like Starbucks Tune of the Week) is less desireable (thus worth less) than something unique, cool and/or collectable.
- Downloadable music is easily attached to anything – it’s easy to print codes directly on the merch, as well as disposable tags.
- The real strengths of downloads are tied to the low cost of music delivery. They’re lighter (read: cheaper) to haul than CDs, they separate the music so it’s only transferred if/when the fan requests it (read: cheaper) and environmentally more friendly and sustainable (read: cheaper) to boot.
- Pure music downloadables, like Sundresses Motel and mallory’s the first one hundred years reissue are essentually pure profit vehicles. After set up charges, the only remaining expenses are design and printing. Printing paper or card stock is much cheaper than pressing or duplicating CDs (which also require printed paper and card stock for packaging!).
We could write an essay on each of the bullet points above, but you get the picture: Musicating merch is great tool to generate more income from current and future fans.
Out of the box we released The Sundresses’ Motel 
Ultimately the difference between our 
In the age of iTunes, artists can’t afford to wait until they’ve completed a full length album to release their latest material. New songs are crowd-tested at shows, making composition and the recording process more interactive — fan reactions are one part of a process we call “
Fuck Yeah I’m With The Sundresses was another, more modest release, based on the cheesy nametags you often get at conventions and festivals. Built around tracks from Thedresses albums and EPs, the idea was to make an affordable sampler to hook casual fans… complete with a clear tag frame, this one sells for just $2. But $2 is still more than $1, and the plastic card is hardly environmentally friendly. We had to do better.
