Merchandise – Fiona Z – The Musician’s Five Star Assistant

Best Of 2022 Tools for Musicians 🔧

Can you believe we are at the end of this year? Personally, it flew by for me. It was a very interesting year with clients getting back to some form of normalcy with touring, yet approaching it very differently. It seems the pandemic shifted how my client’s approached their income streams and business structures for the better. I think musicians are working smarter and creating healthier ways to make a living from performing. Yet, with everyone going more online and strategic, it does make it more competitive. With the right tools though, you can make the best decisions at that moment.

As I did last year, I thought I would recap some of my favorite tools I’ve used or discovered this past year to pass on to you. FYI – I have no affiliate links below. These are tools that I use or genuinely recommend. Here we go!

1. Viberate – If you’re doing tons of online campaigns on social media, this might be worth the splurge to access full data information. This site is a comprehensive way to view your analytics online. You can even compare yourself to other artists to see how you stack up. You can have a free account, and test out the premium features with a 7 day free trial.

2. Canva – You’ve probably heard of Canva by now, and I can’t recommend it enough if you’re not savvy enough for Photoshop. The site constantly improves its functionality and brings tons of inspiration every time I open it up. I use it every week – and the paid version is totally worth it when creating promo materials for social media. Getting to be able to just click and resize graphics is worth it alone!

3. Spotify Marquee – Marquee is a new campaign tool within Spotify’s artist tools, allowing you to send full-screen sponsored recommendations of your new release to relevant Premium and Free listeners. Enjoy 20% this month on your next campaign (even if it’s scheduled to run outside of this month).

4. Shopify – Last year you might remember that I recommended Ecwid as an e-commerce platform, and I still do, but a recent trial has me leaning towards Shopify. It’s just as easy to use AND big bonus, it can connect with your Spotify account to sell merch to your listeners there. If you’ve got any sort of following on Spotify, you don’t want to miss that opportunity.

5. Signnow – If you’re sending out contracts or agreements to band members, venues, etc., you NEED this tool. This allows you to send documents via email for online signature. In this day and age, you cannot do it any other way! Most people do not have printers, and you’ll be chasing for physical signatures when it’s so easy to do it online. Dochub is another platform I recommend for this type of tool, and you can use it for free for up to 5 documents a month.

6. Patreon – Patreon lets musicians create subscription-based channels, set up their prices and rewards and build a monthly income by offering specific perks to their supporters. It’s so easy and such a smart way to connect with your die-hard fans.

7. Tip Jars – Now, there’s not a specific app for this. You can use Paypal.me or AddThis, or something like that. But I found that the clients that do have a tip jar button on their website or emails, usually get a little extra cash in their pocket! So, I don’t think it hurts to have this option open to your fans.

What tools did you use the most in 2022? Anything you want to share with me? Hit reply and let me know. I’d love to know what has been working for you!

See you in 2023,

“NFT, yeah you know me!” (Sorry, couldn’t resist).

I thought I would talk about something relatively new that could affect the music industry in a major way in the very near future …..NFTs.

What are NFTs?

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital tokens stored on a blockchain that can record the ownership of a wide range of digital or physical items, from digital art to event tickets or even music. As well as a token, NFTs can be coded in a way that allows for royalty payments to the creator, which makes them a highly interesting technology for musicians. Songs, albums, music, lyrics, and soundbites can all be NFTs.

Experts say NFTs will be especially transformative in shaping the future of music. NFT sales totalled $25 billion in 2021, compared to just $95 million in 2020. Read more here about how NFTs could define the future of music.

How does it work?

NFTs are a kind of cryptocurrency, but instead of using money, they use assets like art, tickets, music or merchandise. NFTs operate on a blockchain, which is a publicly accessible and transparent network — meaning anyone can see the details of any NFT transaction. NFT could be defined as a rare collectible that is stored digitally. Artists and musicians can create NFTs themselves to auction off as various forms of digital media to their fans who pay using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and others. A musician or band will decide what they want to sell to their fans, be it an audio file, concert tickets, merchandise or something else. Then they will inform their fans of the release of their NFT drop, and put them up for sale at whatever value they would like to sell their works.

How will it help?

For years, musicians have been poorly compensated for their music. The typical revenue split of 50/50—with only 50% of revenue going to the entertainer and the rest shared among agents, lawyers, and distributors. Despite the ease with which people can now listen to music, according to a study, artists receive only 12% of the money made by the entire music industry. This is where NFTs are making all the difference. NFTs could have a huge effect on streaming platforms that simply don’t earn artists enough. We could see an era when artists are able to do business directly with retailers and sell their NFTs like they used to do with self-made CDs. Fans who buy the NFT become an owner of the musician’s work. They are then able to store the music NFTs in their crypto wallets, and if they want, may sell off the NFT to a higher bidder in the future. Despite being the owner of the NFT and being able to sell it, the musician who created the NFT can earn from the re-sales of their work as well, which is one of the most powerful ways music NFTs can empower musicians.

“NFTs will give artists another outlet to create exclusive content for fans in a more artistic fashion. In the future, we’ll see the value of songs appreciate, like Basquiat paintings.” – Dallas rapper Rakim-Al Jabbaar

Currently, there are only a small number of musicians who are exploring the uses of music NFTs such as Kings of Leon, Tory Lanez, Aphex Twin, Ozuna and Belave. . However, with increased knowledge by musicians and fans, the opportunities for artists to benefit from NFTs are growing substantially. Read more here about the Kings of Leon being the first band to release an NFT.

Water and Music wrote an article about the various strategies that music NFT platforms use to attract, onboard and retain their fans, collectors and artists in an increasingly competitive marketplace if you’re interested in learning more.

I know I’ll be keeping a close eye on how musicians are working with NFTs and how it could potentially help your profile relevance and garner new audiences!

Cheers,

Album Release / Blog / Business Tips / Merchandise / Uncategorized - 04/04/2022

Enhance Your Single Release With On Demand Merch

To make up for the lack of live shows, 2020 was a big year for online streaming. The growth as the number of paid subscriptions increased by 24% in early 2020, and lots of music was released during the pandemic. Many of my clients started pouring out singles and releasing them throughout the year – so we got to working on how we could make these releases a fun experience for the fans – beyond just listening to it on Spotify or Apple.

One strategy was using the on-demand printing service, Printful, to create merch specifically around a single release for a limited time. The major artists do this all the time – they get you hyped up about a new release and create unique merch around it. However, you don’t always want to invest in 100s of items, so using the on-demand services is ideal. There are some things I learned along the way. Here are the pros and cons of using on-demand printing that I feel are most important to understand, whether for a release or in general.

CONS
1. Limited items – You are limited to the merchandise that the on-demand printer can offer. That can sometimes be frustrating if you’d like to offer something unique.

2. Profit Margins – You may have to increase the cost of your items to your customers in order to make a decent profit margin, but you have total control on how much you want to make.

3. Return management – It can sometimes be trickier since you’re depending on a third party to process a refund to you in order to refund a customer if there’s an issue. That’s why it’s important to have a clear return policy on your store site that benefits you. Most of the time though, the on-demand printer will want to work with you because they only make money when you do!

PROS
1. No Bulk Orders – The obvious one here is you don’t need to place orders of 100s of items to be able to offer merch in your store. So, you don’t have to worry about having boxes of merch that doesn’t sell sitting in your closet.

2. Inventory Management – You don’t have to worry if you will sell out of an item because it’s all on-demand. Plus you save the headache of having to count and keep track of what was sold / not sold.

3. Design Experimentation – You’re able to explore as many designs as you want, and in turn offer that to your followers. However, I do recommend having a limit of items. You don’t want to overwhelm your shoppers!

4. Fulfillment is a breeze – Never go to a post office again or deal with packing up envelopes of shirts. You can even customize your products and packaging with your branding with Printful, so there’s no sign that it’s coming from a third party.

It’s been really fun to be able to play with new merch items for my clients’ stores without having to invest in boxes of merch. We’ve learned that some things sell really well, and some things do not. So, go ahead and head over to Printful (or another on-demand printing service) and see what merch items you can create today!

Blog / Business Tips / Merchandise - 05/10/2021

So you want to set up a Pre-Order…

With the new year, I had a handful of clients do a bit of rebranding, and with that usually means new merch. Unlike before, and reasonably so, most people don’t want to buy a bunch of merch in bulk, only to see it sitting in their closet for months, and then end up giving it away with other purchases.

There’s a smarter way to handle selling merch to your followers and fans, and I’m here to share it with you! Below are real strategies I’ve used to create great new merch for my clients that they love (and buy)!

For today’s post, I will specifically focus on t-shirt’s, but this could be applied to other types of merch, like bags, glasses, hats, etc. Let’s do this!

1. Picking your design – One way to really engage your fans and slap on a slight guarantee that they’ll love it, is to involve your fans into helping you pick your merch design! People love to give their opinion. 🙂 Some guidelines in sending out the options after you’ve narrowed it down with your designer.

a. Give options, but not too many. 3-5 design options is more than enough, otherwise, you may not get enough strong feedback on one and will have gotten nowhere with the survey. Keeping the options limited will help find the winning design quicker.

b. Allow them to pick one only option. Have your fans pick one, or rank 2 options. Doing ranges of 1-10, for example, will only blur the end results. Keep it clear.

c. Ask your email list, but also ask on your socials. Instagram has a great poll feature on their stories option. You can also send them to a survey, which you can create for free at SurveyMonkey.com. Try to get as many people to take your survey as possible!

2. Setting up the Pre-order – what is the best way to take these pre-orders? I really recommend using Bandcamp if you have a store set up. What I like about it is that you can specify the date you are going to start shipping out (estimate is fine based on when you will order/get the shirts delivered to you) so that it’s clear to customers when they should expect their shirts. Bandcamp is useful in that it will organize your orders and you can even print labels from their back end.

If you don’t have a Bandcamp store, you can use your website store (Woocommerce plugin for WordPress users, Bandzoogle store, or Weebly store, etc.) but just be sure to make it clear in the description and title that it is a pre-order so you don’t have customers emailing in confused, wondering where their order is!

I have used a Paypal.me link as well to handle pre-orders. The issue is you have to ask them to give their size, color, etc. options afterwards since you can’t have them select that when they pay. It can work, but you might have people purchase without information given on their choice and you’ll find yourself chasing them down for their shirt size.

3. Promote the Product – If your budget and timeline allows, order some samples to show off and use as promotion to your fans. People will more likely order something if they get a sneak peek or real look at the item, and if you’re wearing them too! Printful.com does one-off printing and give you a 20% discount and free shipping on 3 different items to see your product beforehand. This is also great if you are trying to decide on a type of shirt or item.

4. Pricing Your Merch – When pricing your shirts, be sure to think of all possible hidden fees. Shipping fees from your manufacturer. The packaging itself for the item. Your time going to the post office or printing off labels should also be factored in. Try to get in a range where you feel comfortable with what you are charging for the item and where you get enough back to make it profitable for you.

5. Create An Incentive – To up the ante on a pre-order, offer either a special price, free shipping or even better, throw in some extras when you ship the item. Think of bracelets, stickers or any other light item that won’t add extra shipping costs to surprise your early supports of the merch item!

6. It Doesn’t Stop At The Post Office – It shouldn’t end at the customer receiving the shirt. Include a handwritten note saying how much you appreciate their support and to share online and tag you (this creates an effect of more people wanting the item, too). Include a coupon code in the package that gives them 10% off any item in your store. Aim to keep the relationship going and strong with your fan after they receive the merch!

Using these strategies, I’ve seen 50+ orders in a matter of weeks, fan engagement grow, and lots of shipments out the door! Stay smart in your merchandise endeavors, and it will certainly pay off.

Merchandise - 03/31/2018