The American Music Manager’s Blog

Let’s be honest playing live shows is the reason everyone joins bands, right?  The loud music, the lights, the girls, it’s everything that is rock n’ roll.  But they can and are one of the best avenues for bands to make a name for themselves and make some money along the way.   With the changes in the music industry, the slowing of the economy and the influx of bands crowding the local club scenes, bands have had to get more creative and come up with new and exciting ways to sell merchandise to their fans.  As I mentioned in the last post “The Big Night,” there is money to be made by playing the show itself by ticket sales, flat rate payments, or a cut of the door, but for upcoming bands, these numbers tend to be somewhat small ranging anywhere from $0.00-$500.00 a night.  I’m going to give you a few tips on other ideas and ways to fill your pocketbooks and keep your rock n’ roll dreams alive.

1. The CD – An old but goody.  CD sales have dropped over 25 percent since 2000 at record and other electronic stores, but one area where they continue to hold steady with sales is selling them at live venues.   Here are a couple suggestions on selling CD’s at your show.

 * Full Length album – One of the number one goals for most bands is to put together a full length CD.  With all of the new digital formats, the cost of printing CD’s has definitely declined, however there is still an investment required to print the CD’s.  I recommend doing smaller runs of your CD no more then 500 for your first self released album.  For those of you in bands or who have been in a band, I’m sure you still have plenty of your past albums colleting dust in a closet somewhere.  Don’t charge over $10.00 for your full length either, it’s a nice round number and about what people expect for a full length.  (Remember to have all of your contact information located on the jacket cover of your CD)

 Total investment: 500 CD’s x $2.50 (estimate for CD duplication and packaging) = Investment of $1250 with a potential $3750 return.  Profit = $3750 

* Single – Put together an EP with songs new songs not on your full length album.  Gives fans something new to purchase who already own your album.  For the single, only print 100 or so at a time and keep the packaging simple to keep your initial cost down. Charge around $3.00-$5.00 per CD.  Now this will not be a big money maker, but it will be a good way to get your name out there and for people to remember your name, plaster the packaging with your contact info.

 Total Investment: 100 CD’s x $1.00 (estimate for CD duplication and packaging) = Investment of $100 with a potential $200-400 return.  Profit = $200-400 

 2. The T-Shirt – Probably the most common, yet effective piece of merchandise a band can sell, fans love the band t-shirt.  While doing research for this article I found a quote that said “I’ve gone from the music selling business to the t-shirt selling business.”  Looking at the numbers you will see why. 

 When it comes to t-shirt sales it’s all about design, design, design.  Put a cool logo on a shirt, and you’ve got yourself a money making machine.  This section is titled t-shirts, but I’m going to include all clothing in the section.  When making clothing selections, make sure you actually see and feel the quality of the product you will be selling.  I’m not saying you need to have a top of line thread count in your clothes, but you want to make sure they’re going to last.  You can find a lot of good deals online with printing, but I suggest you find a local shop that does screen printing and check out the merchandise.  Hoodies have become very popular in the last few years as far as band apparel goes so they are another good option.  And you can keep going form there, hats, underwear, any piece of clothing you can stamp your name on and your fans will purchase is a good option.

 Where you need to be careful is with the initial investment on clothing.  With setup fees and designing a quality logo, the investment will be higher then CDs, but your rate of return can also be higher as well.  I would tend to be conservative on your first venture into clothing as far as quantities are concerned, go with one or two designs and only print no more then 10-20 shirts for each size (small, medium, large, extra large).  Once you start seeing your sales increase, what designs and sizes are popular, you can be a little more liberal with your printing runs, but take it slowly at first.  You will see the profits from t-shirt sales are much higher then that of your CD sales.  You should price your t-shirts from $15-$20. 

 Total investment: 80 T-Shirts x $7.00 (estimate of colored shirt with 2 color screen print) = Investment of $560 with a potential return of $640-$1040. Profit = $640-$1040

3. Stickers – I think of stickers as more of a marketing tool, then an income generating product.  Stickers are a great way to give something free to your fans for just showing up.  Put your name and web site on a sticker pass out a hundred of them and hopefully it will translate into new fans, album and merchandising sales.  If you still insist on selling your stickers, sell them for no more then $1.00 and keep your investment costs low.  Takes a lot of sales to make any money selling stickers, so like I said, give your fans something for free for making it to the show.

 Total investment: Ranges anywhere from $0.20 – $0.75 per sticker x 250 (just a number) = Investment of roughly $125 with a potential return of $125.  Profit = $125 

  4. Miscellaneous – This section could go on and on as to the different types of miscellaneous merchandising items you can sell at your shows.  Be creative, a lot of the times what you sell is determined by the style of music you play.  For example, if you are in a classic rock band you may want to sell Zippos with your band name printed on it, or if you are a punk band how about buttons. 

 One item that I found that I really like is custom printed guitar picks.  The printing cost is low and you could easily sell those for a dollar or two.  Here is their link www.Intunegp.com

 I’ve read plenty of articles about merchandising for bands in the last couple of weeks and one of the articles I came across was written by a guy named Dave Allen.  He has spoken at conferences such as SXSW, SFMusicTech, GrammyMusicTech and PopAshville.  Anyway, he had a novel idea that I think that every band should at least try it’s called “Name Your Price.”  Basically how it works is instead of having listed prices for your CD’s, t-shirts, etc. you announce during your show that you have a booth setup and people can pay what they can for your merchandise.  He found that more times then not, people paid more for the items then the bands usually sold them for.  If you are interested in reading the entire article, here is the link.  http://www.pampelmoose.com/mspeaks/2009/02/how-bands-can-make-more-money-by-not-putting-a-price-on-a-cd

 One other quick tip, if you are serious about setting up merchandising at your shows, and it is feasible for your band to pull off, you should look into portable and wireless credit card machines.  With more and more people only using debit cards and credit cards, your chances of making a sale are almost guaranteed to increase by being able to process credit cards.  Here’s a web site with more information.  http://www.merchantexpress.com/wireless_credit_card_processing.htm

 And in closing, obviously everyone is here to make music, but in order to continue doing what you love it helps to make some money along the way.  The estimated and potential profits I listed above are nothing more then that, estimates and potentials.  It is up to you to go out find amazing deals, come up with some creative products and ideas and get it into the hands of your fans.

 I know I said it once, but I will say it again, I will never guarantee success, but I will guarantee that if you do use these tips form the “Playing Live Shows” series, your chances at success will be a lot greater.  Good luck, and if you are playing in the Minneapolis area, let me know, I would love to come out and see your show. 

 A.P.