Bla bla dystopia or bla bla utopia. Have your pick. Oh wait, add metaverse, Zoom, and VR headsets. Have you noticed how every marketing guru is losing his/her sh*t lately and tries to be ahead of the curve telling you that the entire world is gonna be digital? Well, they’re wrong. Just like all those who thought that paper books will disappear when ebooks appeared. This is seriously important for you to understand as a musician because it will separate you from the uninformed bunch who takes advice from mad YouTubers while they should just study the past 30 years. Here are the 6 indisputable reasons you should still sell physical products as a musician.
6. Touch is the most intimate of senses.
Taste, smell, vision, hearing, touch, and proprioception (awareness of one’s body in space) are the 6 senses that we humans have been endowed with. Touch, however, is the most acute of all when it comes to forming connections and understanding the world around you. You can be deprived of taste and you’ll survive. Same for smell and hearing. It’s much harder without seeing. But touch… Is what determines us as being alive really. The moment your fans TOUCH a T-shirt, vinyl, poster, pen, box, mask, (insert whatever merch crosses your mind), it becomes REAL and personal. You’ll always form strong bonds with people who get to touch your merch instead of just consuming it in digital form.
5. Easy brag on social media.
How can you show on your TikTok or Instagram that you bought the new single by Lil Nas X? Oops, you can’t! However, you CAN show off his vinyls, t-shirts, custom phone cases, shoes, etc. Physical products have the long-term effect of organic promotion. Especially if they have a cool and unique design, your merch items will promote you more than paid ads in many cases.
4. Higher incentive for future resell.
Chances are, you’ll always become better and invest more in your music career. This means that your merch value will only go up in time. People who are in the fan culture know this and they like acquiring limited edition collectibles that know are very likely to equal a stock market investment in the future. Heck, a recent study revealed that limited edition Lego sets return higher profits for the owners than the stock market for investors. Can a fan do that with a digital product? No, unless it’s an NFT but those are barely understood or collected by people worldwide at the present moment.
3. Memorabilia and historical value.
Do you know how your mom keeps old concert tickets framed and goes on about the time she attended some ’70s musician show? You want to create the same lasting brand reputation for your music. Physical products impact your fans and those around them. Create a real-life connection and you become part of their time on this Earth. While you’ll remember it as the first vinyl you put on sale, some teenage boy will one day tell his sons how you impacted his vision on the world and how great of an artist you were/ are. Needless to say, the more post-mortem branding you can anticipate, the more royalties your kin will enjoy.
2. Maximized levels of star quality perception.
A new indie artist puts out digital products. A pop star and famous Rock bands put out paper books, calendars, clothing, and box sets. Get closer to the second group and you’ll be perceived more like the people in it.
1. Multi-level repurposing.
Let’s say you didn’t succeed in selling ALL copies of your vinyl. Or all copies of your A3 posters for that matter. Well guess what? You can give those away as a souvenir to DJs, radio hosts, and any other media people that you get to work with as well as use the unsold merch to form contests and surprise giveaways to loyal fans. Digital codes will barely ever have the same impact on people.
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