A new taxonomy of the music merch industry
I’m excited to share the fourth member-exclusive database with you: a list of over 40 different music merch and e-commerce companies around the world.
The database spans independent agencies, self-serve platforms and closed/label-owned platforms dedicated to music merch, retail and e-commerce experiences.
If you’re interested in diving in right away, you can view the database here. Otherwise, read on for some more details about the context behind the database, how I went about compiling the company list and some of my initial takeaways from the research.
Context
I’ve written in the past about opportunities for innovation in the music merch sector — from making better use of native social features like Instagram Checkout, to more openly embracing merch created and even sold by everyday fans instead of resorting to takedown requests.
In general, my impression is that merch tends to be treated as an afterthought, or as a box towards the bottom of a marketing checklist for an artist’s album or tour — rather than as a standalone, direct-to-consumer retail operation in its own right, with its own branding and marketing strategy.
For my own research — and likely for a future article — I wanted to get a better sense not just of opportunities for improvement, but also of what the market looks like today in terms of its key players.
There’s already been a lot of interesting writing and reporting on the market size of music merch at large (which I’ve included in the “Online Articles and Resources” tab in the database), but virtually no central, comprehensive lists of companies and agencies dedicated to the sector.
A new music-merch taxonomy
For my database, I cobbled together a list of 44 companies that can be broken down into the following six categories (highlighted in the “Primary Product/Service” column in the database):
- Self-Serve Platform — an ecommerce platform that any artist, label or other music professional can sign up for and use to build their own webstore in the same day. Examples: Music Glue, atVenu, Bandcamp, Single Music.
- Self-Serve Manufacturing — a tool that any artist, label or other music professional can start using to design and manufacture their own merch; usually a webstore component is not included. Examples: Merch.ly, Bands on a Budget.
- Closed Platform — an ecommerce platform that selectively accepts artists/labels to sell merch on a centralized store, based on a distinct vetting process. Examples: Merchbar, Ochre, MerchNOW, Hello Merch.
- Independent Agency — an independently-operated agency providing a variety of merchandising and ecommerce services to artists, labels, festivals and other clients in the music industry. Examples: Wallflower Merch, Futureshirts, Absolute Merch, Sandbag.
- Label-Owned Agency/Platform — a merchandising agency and/or marketplace owned by a major label, that often services only that label’s clients. Examples: Bravado (Universal Music Group), EMP (Warner Music Group), The Thread Shop (Sony Music Entertainment).
- Independent Brand — an independent retail brand dedicated to partnering with artists on limited-edition, specialized merch. This is a rare breed; the only company in this category in my database is Barking Irons, which has collections with Bob Dylan and Billy Joel.
As you’ll see in the database, there’s some overlap among these categories; for instance, MerchNOW and 24Hundred are both closed platforms that also offer merchandising services to select clients.
A few disclaimers
For now, this list is pretty U.S.- and Europe-centric. If there are any important music-merch agencies or companies elsewhere in the world that you think I should add to my list, please let me know!
Also, while I’m aware that many artists use more generalist tools like Squarespace to build their merch stores, I did not include most of these generalist tools in my database, but rather opted to focus on music-specific platforms and services.
(If you’re interested in a wider outlook on merch/ecommerce, 2PM, a subscription news site dedicated to the intersection of media and commerce, maintains its own generalist merch index.)
Initial takeaways
The landscape is super fragmented — and it likely won’t stay that way forever. If you look specifically at the independent merch agencies, a lot of them are frankly providing the same sets of services and competencies — to the point where they’re likely just competing on price, or maybe on reputation.
Major labels have been spearheading consolidation and acquisition efforts in music merch, but I expect more of these independent companies to acquire each other in the future as well — particularly generalist platforms like Shopify and Redbubble buying up the more niche, music-focused offerings.
Very few self-serve music-merch platforms have integrations with streaming services. To my knowledge, Merchbar is the only music merch company in my database that has integrations with streaming services (namely Spotify and YouTube) — and Merchbar is, for now, a closed platform.
There are likely hundreds of thousands of other musicians who are selling their own merch, and whose music is available on streaming services. I think there’s an opportunity either for these streaming companies to be more open to integrating with self-serve tools, or for a third-party startup to come in and bridge that gap between streaming and e-commerce in a more open, democratic manner.