Last updated on February 3rd, 2023
Music. Art. Life. Music is the rhythm, art is the passion and life is the subject where all three complement each other. Musicians create a variety of soulful music that becomes part of our lives. But, most musicians do not know how to handle the business part of the art. After all, they need to sell music albums to stay afloat in the market. But, with a professional marketing approach, they can promote their music brand and make a name in the creative industry. How? An online merchandise store is their effective means to reach out to masses with their music. In this post, we’ve shared why musicians should create an online merchandise store to win millions of hearts and make money at the same time.
The use of online stores and websites is increasing multifold by each passing day. This is because people are using online tools to search and buy products. Ecommerce has become the norm of the day.
Companies are now conducting their businesses also from online stores. So, while their physical storefronts have the products, they usually get more customers from their online stores.
For this reason, more and more music companies and individual musicians have taken up online merchandise for effective brand promotion. With the merchandise store, you will not be directly selling your music albums.
For that purpose, as a musician, you can sell the albums from various physical music shops across different cities.
Your online merchandise store can be a vehicle to promote your music brand. You will create a wide range of marketing products such as custom t shirt, hoodies, sweatshirts, and accessories to sell from the store.
These are the promotional products you will create with your brand’s logo and colors etc. elements.
What is music merch?
Music merch is any merchandise that you sell to promote music. So, the most popular music merchandises are t-shirts and hoodies. Since fashion and merch go along nicely, most people wear t-shirts and hoodies to show their love for music and fashion alike.
Accessories like custom embroidered hats and neck chains are also considered as a popular music merchandise. These accessories also go well with the clothing as an overall package to project oneself as a fan of a certain music artist.
For instance, famous singers such as Justin Beiber, Selena Gomez, etc. are using online merchandise platforms to promote their work as well as create awareness through merchandise.
Even, they are promoting their merchandise through social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, etc.
But, a simple t-shirt or any other custom clothing becomes a music merch only when some music elements such as the face of a musician, guitar, brand’s logo, colors are printed on it.
So, when these elements appear printed on a t-shirt, it becomes merchandise for fans, followers, and other customers.
Here Is Why Your Music Brand Should Create An Online Merchandise Store
01. A Source Of Additional Income
Once you have set up an online merchandise store, it becomes your permanent source of earning a side income. Your major earning opportunities are the concerts you do and music albums you sell.
But, a considerable amount of money is what you can also generate from selling merchandise related to your music brand.
According to a survey, the sales in music merch has increased leaps and bounds. The Global Licensing Survey 2019 showed that the retail for music merch had skyrocketed to $3.48 billion in 2018 from $3.08 billion in 2016.
Given these stats, it is clear now that your merch store is going to be a good source of revenue. But you should be promoting it amid your target music lovers so that they visit it to buy.
02. No Need For A Physical Store
An online merchandise store is a virtual store. This means that there is no need for you to keep the music records physically in the store.
So, while there are thousands of music records in a music shop in your locality, the virtual shop has none. An online store sells the music albums when a customer clicks on an image of the record and orders for its delivery.
Your music company can have records in its physical shop. When the customers buy your album from an online store, you can then send the records from your physical store. In this way, you will also get rid of the need to maintain a storage area.
03. Helps Build Your Music Brand
Your online merchandise store for music is visited by thousands of people daily. They see your company’s logo each time they visit the store. Besides the logo, they also see a lot of other brand elements of your company.
They also come across your color scheme and become familiar with it and other elements. So, all of your brand-specific artwork is visible to the user and visitors of your merchandise store.
The online company store also becomes your centralized location for consumers as they search the store every time they need to buy music and see your brand elements. This goes a long way toward building your music brand.
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04. Reduce Your Marketing Costs
One of the advantages of opening your music company’s online merchandise store is that it helps lower your marketing costs. Your overall marketing budget for promoting your new music brand may be smaller. With the online store, you can effectively market your music within your set budget.
There are not many overhead expenses, such as employee salaries, shop rent, electricity bills, etc. to run an online merchandise store. So, the store becomes an effective means of marketing without spending much on brand promotion.
05. Create A Centralized System
An online merchandise store also functions as your centralized system for a lot of works for order fulfillment. It is a system for your customers to order your music merchandise, such as custom hoodies, t-shirts, and accessories.
Most of the system works automatically, which means your employees can focus on marketing and driving the results. They do not have to spend a lot of time processing orders.
For instance, if your marketing team wants to give away your company’s music merch, such as a t-shirt, you can order it printing in a hassle-free way from the online store.
06. Incentivize Your Employees
You can use your online merchandise store to quickly create t-shirts and other clothing designs for your employees who perform well.
Since the cost of creating designs and printing them on t-shirts is manageable, you can offer the shirts as an incentive to your employees. Just a touch of creativity is often enough to design your brand clothing items for promotional purposes quickly.
How about using branded swag to build some excitement on your company’s sporting events, picnics, weekend-long retreat, etc. Your employees will appreciate it when they receive branded items.
07. Enhance Your Customer Reach
With your online merchandise store in place, you can reach out to more customers easily. When compared to a physical store, the number of potential customers visiting your online store will be much higher.
What is more, you can even compete with big brands in your market due to your online marketing strategies using the store.
08. Update Your Store Anytime
An advantage of opening an online merchandise store is that you can immediately update it with new information. You can promote your attractive merch deal, such as discounts on your store page quickly with a few clicks.
For instance, if you need to make changes in your merch prices, just change the product’s price field. Also, you can add as many music merch items to the online store as there are no space constraints.
Now that you know why your music brand should have an online merchandise store make sure that you open the store on the right platform.
How to create your online merchandise store?
One of the key things to keep in mind while opening your online merchandise store is that the platform must be trustworthy.
You can start your website to sell music merch, but that proves to be costly in the end for individual musicians. This is because you need to bear a lot of expenses toward maintaining the utmost functioning of the website.
A better and cost-effective option is to look for a print-on-demand platform to create an e-commerce store.
Designhill, the leading creative marketplace, owns a POD platform named PrintShop for professional artists where they can open their online merchandise store. They can sell their artworks online using the platform.
The process to open your online music merch store at the PrintShop is free. All you need to do is to fill out a simple application form and start creating and selling your music merch. You also benefit from Designhill’s traffic that you can explore to drive it toward your online store.
The POD platform will also print your merch design on t-shirt, hoodies, etc. merchandise on your order and deliver it to customers on your behalf. Since the profit margin on selling the merch is high on this POD, you will earn a decent income.
Wrapping Up
Musicians are artists who look for some additional source of income. An online merchandise store is a cost-effective solution to earning a side income regularly. This store also becomes a marketing tool to promote your music band as you sell t-shirts etc. clothing printed with your brand logo, slogan, and color scheme.
