Sell merchandise directly from the streaming app
Many bands also generate sales with merchandising products. (Photo: dimitris_k / Shutterstock.com)
Musicians can now offer records, t-shirts, sweaters or other merchandising products directly on Spotify. To this end, the streaming provider is cooperating with the e-commerce service provider Shopify.
2020 was a difficult year for the music industry. Although sales in the streaming sector rose by a good fifth, sales with physical sound carriers also fell in times of closed shops. In addition, the musicians lost income in the corona year through live concerts and thus also through the sale of tour merchandise. While more concerts can slowly take place again, Spotify is now also opening up for the sale of t-shirts, sweaters and other products with band logos.
Musicians have been able to offer such merchandising products via the provider Mechbar in Spotify since 2016, but now they should also be able to integrate their own online shop via Shopify. Anyone using the Canadian shopping solution can now connect it to their own artist account on Spotify and then offer three selected products for sale in the streaming app. In addition to clothing, records or CDs, for example, would also be conceivable. This should not result in additional costs for the musicians.
Local artists can already integrate their products into Spotify via Shopify, but their German fans cannot buy the merchandise for the time being. The fan shops created with the new function are currently only shown to Spotify users from the USA, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. When exactly German fans would be able to support their favorite musicians in this way, we were not yet able to be informed upon request. For the time being, only musicians who have many fans in English-speaking countries will benefit from this function.
Please also note: If you want to offer products via the Shopify integration in Spotify, you have to use the Merchandise Policy from the streaming provider. For example, they explicitly prohibit the sale of products that speak out for or against political organizations or laws. For one or the other politically active band, that might be a problem.
