Our final stop in this series looks at the meme that “musicians make all their money selling t-shirts.” As with other issues that we’ve tackled in this series, there is a grain of truth to this. Let’s face it, in a world where sound recordings are ubiquitous and low cost/nearly free for consumers, some bands have turned to making money on things that are either tangible, unique or exclusive. This includes merchandise, licensing your brand or likeness, or endorsing some product.
But how important are the merchandise and branding revenue streams? And are they changing over time?
2 comments:
Though a sound argument against the myth that musicians only make money through selling t-shirts (and other merchandise), it does exclude another large portion of the music industry. A musical institution that has become largely traditional for younger people in America, and really across the world, are musical festivals. This past summer I went to a musical festival near me, and the merchandise lines were insane. For all three days of the festival there were lines stretching back 20 to 40 people thick at all times. They were running out of t-shirts like mad, and shipping in new ones every few hours. In fact, onsite, in the trailer of a 16-wheeler, they housed the t-shirt printing facilities for the festival and its logo. They cranked out hundreds of thousands of sweatshirts, t-shirts, tank tops, water bottles, and bumper stickers sold anywhere from 15 to 45 dollars a piece. Though the bands themselves might not see all of this money, festival and event organizers are DEFINITELY bringing in a large portion of their revenue (and then paying the bands to come to these sorts of events from this revenue). This was quite overlooked in the article, and for any musicians that tour at a facility that sells merchandise, they are indirectly earning income from the facility's sales of merchandise. Maybe even factoring in this sort of merchandise sales, it still only accounts for 3% of the money they make, but it still can make a difference.
This was so interesting. We were just taking about this in my Roots of Rock and Roll class. We all had thought that merchandise was a huge part of it. I am surprised to find out that it is not. But I have to wonder where all that money goes, because that stuff sells like crazy. It does seem like hardly any money would be made from the music itself nowadays though. With the alarming amount of music that is illegally downloaded and the ease at which music can be made a shared, it makes you think about were the music industry could end up years from now. But currently I dont think concerts or festivals have any danger of becoming scarce.
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