As you probably know, for emerging artists revenue earned through streaming your music online amounts to little or nothing. Nothing worthwhile anyway! The easiest way for you to make money with your music is by selling merch to your fans. Not only does selling merch earn revenue, it also creates a connection and bond with your audience. They become representatives of who you are and a walking advertisement for your music. Selling your merch online enables you to reach anywhere in the world and not just the people who are brave enough to come up to the merch table at your latest gig!
There are various ways you can do this online, a good one is via bandcamp who also run monthly “bandcamp fridays” where the artist takes a bigger cut on sales made that day. I recommend pushing this hard as you’re going to make a better marginDo. Then there are the obvious things like advertising your merch on social media. You’re now even able to link products to your online store from your Instagram posts.
But the main way in which people will consume your music online will be through spotify as they dominate the streaming market. When someone is listening to your music you’re going to be at the absolute top of their mind at that moment which if they’re into you, is the prime moment to try and target that sale. But getting someone to close Spotify, search for your social media profile, find your merch store and buy something during that moment is probably going to be very difficult. It’s high friction and requires a lot of effort on their part. Don’t blame yourselves, it’s the same for everyone!
However Spotify are now making your lives slightly easier by integrating Shopify into their platform allowing you to make sales directly from your Spotify artist profile. So now if you scroll down on the artist profile, where you normally just have your bio and gig listing, you can now list merch offers that link directly to your online store. They’re also offering a 90 day free trial to a shopify account for you to try it out.
For more information visit the Spotify blog and get setup through your Spotify Artists account.