Are you a musician looking for a way to connect with your fans and generate some additional income? Then you need to make some merch!
Band merch is a great tool for small musicians. It helps you to promote your music and form a deeper connection your fans. It’s also a great revenue stream considered streaming services like Spotify pay artists pennies. See how some of our shop owners/musicans are using band merch to their advantage:
Create Your Logo
A logo is an important branding tool. It makes your band look more professional, and becomes an identifier for fans of your music. Your logo can also sway potential fans. It sounds shallow, but it can have an impact on whether people listen to your music. It should reflect the style or vibe you are portraying with your sound.
Talkalots wanted to make their band merch look simple, yet feel unique. So they used a couple versions of their logo for merch designs, which are available to shop on hoodies, hats, and buttons. They looked at other bands’ logos for inspiration, which is something they’d recommend to artists looking to create their own. As long as you don’t try to rip off material and credit it as your own. Having those influences and inspirations is important.
Your logo can dictate what the rest of your band merch and branding looks like. But it’s just the jumping off point.
Build on Your Likeness
You can start to have more fun with your band merch after you design a good logo. Trestles are an indie band based in Santa Cruz, California. They started their band when they were in high school and started selling merch right away. They saw that they could form a connection with their fans and began experimenting what they could do with their merch designs.
“The first Trestles merch drop was literally a sketch that our bass player, Sophia, drew on the back of a flyer while we wear waiting to go on at a show. We liked the drawing so much that we digitized it and released it as our first drop.”
These kind of ideas can take your band merch to the next level. You don’t need to play it safe all the time. When you’re comfortable in your music and know who your audience is, it makes it easier to take risks and do something different.
Make Exclusive Online Merch
Buying band merch online is a great option for people who can’t make it to a live show and still want to support an artist. Want to drive sales? Make your releases exclusive so people are more motivated to make purchases. That’s what Flobots did!
They partnered with Spreadshop for exclusive merch drops on their tour this spring. Limited merch drops happened for fans that couldn’t make it out to the live shows. Having an online presence is so important for bands today, and it’s important that your merch is a reflection of that. This also makes it easy to promote to people on socials: you just direct them to the shop link in your bio.
Stylize Your Show Promotion
Have a big show coming up? Preparing for a mini tour? Use band merch to get the word out ahead of time. Make posters and post them to bulletin boards in your community. Make buttons and stickers with your band name to hand out to people who buy a ticket in advance.
Anton Johansen is a singer/songwriter who promotes his brand of grunge rock by playing live in his community. We love the poster he created for a show he was playing! You can create designs like this using design tools like Canva. They provide you with tons of different templates and graphics to play with. You don’t need to be a professional designer to create band merch.
Band merch is more than just stylizing your sound, it’s taking the next step in your musical career. These shops know how to brand themselves because they know their music. Are you ready to take that step?
Start making and selling your own band merch for FREE with Spreadshop!
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