Are you a music artist who supplements your revenues with sales of T-shirts and posters? If so, as of this week you can sell that merchandise through your Spotify profile. The global music site now allows music artists to display their merchandise on their Spotify pages and link directly to their online stores. The announcement was made on the official Spotify blog:
“We’ve been testing this merchandise functionality with a number of artists over the last month and the response from fans has been fantastic. We’re really excited that Spotify’s 24 million music-loving users can now see merchandise and concerts while listening to their favorite artists, and that we, in turn, can provide additional revenue opportunities for artists of all sizes.”
Spotify already offers a way for independent musicians to make royalties based on the number of times people listen to their music. With the new merchandising feature, artists now have another monetization option. Music Ally reports that the program was piloted with about 200 artists for the past few weeks, including rock n’ roll legends Led Zeppelin. Spotify director of artist services Mark Williamson tells Music Ally:
“What’s important to us is that with this integration, we don’t just want to chuck a merchandise listing up and say ‘that’s it’, we want to optimize it, so we’ll be examining what’s working across all the artists, what kind of items are selling.”
Spotify and its partner in the new roll-out, Topspin, stress they are taking no percentage from the new merchandise sales. This is especially the case because many sales are generally taking place off the site in an online store already being used by the artist. Topspin is the company providing the link tool that lets artists connect the display on their Spotify profiles to their online stores.
The new program may help to blunt criticisms already leveled by independent artists disappointed by their earnings on Spotify.
There are some limitations. For now artists can only list up to three items. And the feature is only available in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland, Music Ally reports.
However, the company is expecting to roll it out in other countries at some point in the future.
Images: Spotify
Spotify and Pandora are going after each other, and it seems that bands are coming out as winners. Hope it takes off!
Aira Bongco
I agree. I am always happy to see independent talents get the spotlight especially if the talent is way too awesome to ignore. Giving them a chance to sell some merchandise is a new avenue for them to make some extra money.
Spotify’s millions of music-loving users can see merchandise and concerts while listening to their favorite artists, and this can provide additional revenue opportunities.