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A
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Once upon a time, concert merch was something you bought on your way out of the venue. A Tor T shirt, a poster, maybe a hoodie if it was cold outside. But these days, merch is a whole lot more than a souvenir. From limited edition drops at sold out arena tours to pop up shots and shops and online exclusives, concert merch has become a major revenue stream for artists and a status symbol for fans. And then there's a second life of merch. Vintage tour teas and rare pieces that can sell for hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the resale market. Last year, a Vint in Bangkok posted a clip on Instagram of a buyer who paid $27,000 for a faded NAS shirt with the lyrics from if I Ruled the World. To help us understand what makes a simple piece of merch iconic and how the business of concert merch has changed, music industry strategist and consultant Tatiana Siriano. Hi, Tatiana.
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Hi. How's it going?
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B
It's going. I'm going well. She was a former business reporter at Billboard and she's now the vice president of an entertainment market company. And we are also Jo Nick Adler, the co founder of Mintage, a digital fashion brand built around vintage clothing. Hey, Nick.
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D
Hey.
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Morning listeners. Get in on this conversation. Tell us about that T shirt, hoodie or poster that you are most proud of. What concert was it? How much did you pay for it? And how long have you held on to it? Our phone number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. So, Tatiana, concert merch has always been a way for a band to make, make a buck. Right. Why did concert merch shift from a souvenir concert goer, something you would pick up and take home, into a serious stream of revenue?
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C
Yeah, it's so interesting because I actually think that the impetus for this was really the pandemic, which is interesting because it's, it's a time when artists weren't touring at all. And of course now, you know, the boom in merchandise is so tied to the live music boom. But really what happened during that time was, you know, so many artists these days earn the majority of their revenue through live music. And at that Time, obviously, they couldn't tour. They lost this really critical revenue source, and so many of them really doubled down on merchandise to try and sort of plug that gap. And I think, you know, that was sort of when everyone started to think more about, well, what types of merch can we do that we haven't done before? And because you no longer had to carry all this stuff on the road, people were getting really creative with, like, candles and jewelry and, you know, big things, small things, figurines. And I think that really led to this explosion in terms of what is possible, in what merch can be and this view that it can really be anything. And, of course, now that we're back on the road and, you know, there's shows going on all the time and huge demand for it that has just sort of coalesced into this really massive market where, as you said, you can go to a show now and not just get a plain T shirt with the band's name plastered on it, but you can walk away with something much more unique and is a sort of a status symbol and a thing to say that, you know, I was there.
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B
Nick, what role does.
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Does fandom and identity play into why people buy merch?
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F
The truth of it is, I think that these artists, you know, especially artists like, I'd say Travis Scott or people like Kanye over the years, who have really doubled down on building their brand beyond just the tour, they have this long connection with these. With their. With their fans who have grown up listening to them and just want to continue to own them and continue to, like, take these pieces home with them. So the more time that they have spent with these artists growing up, they really, really find a connection to them. You know, when I see some of these vintage items that come across my desk on a daily basis, I look at some of these pieces, and it brings me back to a moment in time when, you know, I was driving around in high school listening to a certain artist, and I remember going to that concert and. And all of a sudden that T shirt is back in the market, and I want to buy it and, you know, spend top dollar for it. So it's just a connection we have established over many, many years with these artists. And, you know, you want to own a piece of that legacy and you want to kind of reminisce and feel that nostalgia.
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E
Nick, is it about fashion as well?
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F
It is about fashion. I mean, I think the. The vintage side of it is really, really, really connected in terms of current fashion. People right now want to wear these pieces that are one of a kind, one of one really well built, really well tailored, or, you know, good strong cottons, great tags, and they basically can look like they're part of a movement but still have that individuality to it. So I believe that, you know, a lot of it is truly about fashion, and some of it's about collectibility.
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E
Tatiana, how has merch become part of a. An artist brand for storytelling?
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C
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that, as I was saying, we've evolved so much far, farther beyond, you know, the standard tour shirt with the band's name on it to where artists can really personalize what they're doing. And there's so many more sort of boutique merch agencies that have opened up that do this sort of thing. There's examples ranging from, you know, the band Japanese Breakfast came out with chopsticks as part of their merchandise. When Lady Gaga had song rain on me, she sold rain boots. So it's become another way for artists to really bring fans into their story. And that's a really critical way to break through in today's, you know, super competitive attention economy. It's no longer enough to have a song that connects with people. Unfortunately, you often need to have more than that to break through and to get people's attention coming back again and again. And that's why storytelling is so important. So, yeah, I totally think that merch has evolved to. To help with that as well.
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B
We're talking about the business of concert merch with music industry strategist and consultant Tatiana Siriano and Mintage co founder Nick Adler. All right, listeners, we're going to go to you. Let's talk to Mike in Sparta. Hi, Mike. Tell us about what you got.
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G
Hey, Allison, how you doing? I love the topic today. Just kind of had me reminiscing as I was recently cleaning out my closet. I was kind of coming of age in the early mid-90s. One of my first concerts, the first concert I actually got to go to alone, my dad drove me and a friend to Roseland Ballroom. RIP RIP in 1995. Yeah, I know you're probably reporting MTV news at the time and Weezers first kind of tour as they were coming up and dropped us off inside there and, you know, went to the merch table. There certainly wasn't the plethora that there. That there is now. But I got two great vintage shirts from that tour and I was taken out recently. The issue is that, you know, at the time, bag year was definitely more in. And I know it's kind of come Back a little bit. But my personal style right now is not to wear this, like double XL shirt that I bought in 1995 as a 13 year old. So. And just some other tours over the years. Some parking lot tees too, if you, you know, saw Green Day, I think in 95 in Nassau Coliseum and bought something in the parking lot there in Mallapalooza. So got to see some great shows and kept some of them. Luckily, I'm a bit of a pack rat, despite my wife's.
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E
Thanks so much for calling. Richard is calling from Jersey City.
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Hey, Richard, thanks for calling, all of it.
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H
Oh, thank you. I enjoy your show. I wanted to tell you about the Bruce Weber T shirt. My friend Phyllis, I gave her a Chet Baker let's get lost T shirt from Bruce Weber's film. I worked briefly in the 80s, freelanced at Calvin Klein, and these were available in the storage room. I sent two of them to friends in Virginia and I sent one to my friend Phyllis. She damaged hers with bleach or some laundry accident, and I managed to get the other one given to her by the other friend. She wore it all the time. She loved that shirt. I've got photos of her in that shirt. And when she died, she asked to be buried in it.
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E
Whoa. Oh, that's a sweet and sad story at the same time. Thank you so much for calling in, Richard. Nick, you know, some artists and teams are putting more effort into the design of their products. Tell us about a piece of merchandise that you thought was. Was. Was pretty great. This was fun. Unforgettable.
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F
I mean, there's so many. One piece of vintage merch. So I've spent most of my career working alongside Snoop Dogg, whether it's been on the brand management side or. Or on the touring side. And so I. I've traveled the world and seen so many different shows where, you know, we build merch out and then we get there and there's bootleggers out front. We used to do our best to kick out all the bootleggers. Flash forward to actually during COVID I walk into a small vintage shop in la and on the wall is a Snoop Dogg tee. And I asked the. I asked Sean Witherspoon whose shop it was. I said, you know, how much for that T shirt? And he said, $2,000. And my jaw dropped and I said, why is that T shirt $2,000? And he pulled it off the wall and he started to talk to me about the fade and the fact that it was a black shirt and it had become this off Green. And the fact that the T shirt the print was looked like it was photocopied from the Source magazine. And, you know, it had. It had curse words on it. It was this wild shirt that would have never made it through the actual checks and balances of the management team in the merch company. And it was a bootleg tee. And it was that moment that I learned that, like, you know, a bootleg could become more valuable than an actual produced piece of true merch. And my mind was blown because I hadn't seen a time where the bootleg was now more valuable than the original. So I said, you have to take that T shirt off the wall. I want it. And it actually was the impetus for starting this whole brand based around vintage.
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Let's talk to Mark in the West Village. Hey, Mark, thanks for calling all of it.
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G
What are you going?
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It's going well.
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I
So I've been going to shows since 1981, 82 concerts and whatnot. I still go out to see music. And so one precious thing for me is in 1987, I bought a Sonic U shirt. I've been seeing them since, like 1986, and I still have the shirt. I thought about selling it because it's worth a bunch of money, but it still fits me. And since then, I've gotten to hang out with the band sometimes. I've had a couple mutual friends of the band. I ran to Lee Ronaldo in the street just last week. So that shirt is something that's. It's very precious to me. I could probably get a few hundred bucks selling it at this point. It's a sister album tour shirt, but it just means too much to me. I just can't let it go.
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F
Sonic Youth shirts or grails. Is it the blue T shirt?
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The blue one actually, too. They're probably all worth the money, but.
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G
You know, oh, oh.
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I feel a deal happening on the air right now. We're going to go to break. We're talking about music industry concert merchant. This is all of it, you guys. You talk during the break.
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You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are music industry strategist and consultant Tatiana Siriano and Mintage Clothing co founder Nick Adler. We're talking about the business of concert merch. Tatiana. Products sometimes at concert venues don't always end up being sold and sometimes they end up in landfills. Artists like Billie Eilish have been pushing to label upcycle merchandise. How important is sustainability and ethical production in the industry?
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C
Today, I think it's becoming more and more important. It's definitely becoming more of a conversation with people like you mentioned with Billie, especially as vinyl becomes this really interesting new merch product for younger generations, many of whom don't even own record players and are buying these, you know, these records, which, you know, we've surveyed about and found that to be true. Obviously, that has a big impact on the environment, as does physical merch, meaning, you know, T shirts and things like that. But I think it's with vinyl that we've really heard that conversation come to the fore and with artists like Billy. So I know that there's a lot of companies that are trying to solve this challenge, but especially with vinyl, it's interesting because this boom was so unexpected. A lot of vinyl producers, you know, they haven't updated their technology in a really long time. Some of the people who work on these machines and really know the intricacies of them are no longer in the business and things like that. So there's challenges to it. But I would say it's definitely something that is coming up more and more, and I'm glad to see it.
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Let's talk to.
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E
James is calling from North Brunswick.
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Hi, James, what do you have?
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H
Hey, good afternoon. We have a cabin in the Delaware Valley, Catskill. And there's a small shop called the Unique Fashion Outlet. Man, they got great stuff. And my wife has a 1981 hoodie from the Stones Tattoo Youth Tour that has aged beautifully. It looks fantastic. It is truly a unique piece of clothing and she loves it.
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E
Thanks for calling in. Let's talk to Michael, who is calling us from Seoul, Korea. Hi, Michael, thanks for calling all of it.
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D
Hey, Austin.
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G
Hey, Tatiana and Nick.
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D
Kind of a funny story that I'm.
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Hearing this topic because I am in Seoul. I was just visiting and Jenny Blackpink.
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Jenny is having her first photo exhibition here.
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And so I thought to check it out. I wasn't able to get in, but I was able to shop at the merch store and happened to pick up one of 3,000 of her photo books. And it's quite a beautiful coffee table book. And just to put a spin on it, I'm speaking with AI. I'm on eBay, Mercari, trying to figure out what to do with it.
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D
Really beautiful.
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I'd like to flip through it, but, you know, I can't open the package. You know how that goes.
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E
Thanks for calling in. Nick, do you have any advice for this thing, person who has this potentially worthwhile piece of merch?
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F
Yeah, No, I love that. I mean, I think you're right. I think your instinct is if you want to flip it, you got to leave it untouched and, you know, hold on to it for a. For a little while. I mean, obviously you got to check the market because sometimes these things are better to sell fast than to hold too long. But I will say, you know, some of these things, they become. They start out as something you want to collect and trade, and ultimately they become something that enters your own catalog and you look back on and you keep. So if you. If you open it up and you start to look through it and it feels. You feel passionately about it, don't feel, you know, so obligated to sell it. Maybe just save it in 10 years to 20 years. 20 years. Really the mark of vintage 20 years is when something really becomes collectible.
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E
This says I was a bookkeeper for a firm that managed hip hop artists back in the early 90s. I have a bunch of unworn promo T shirts sitting in a box in my basement. Could they be worth anything that is gold?
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F
I will take them all. Let me know. Look me up. Hit me on Instagram.
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I
I will take them.
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E
Tatiana, how do newer artists approach merch differently than legacy acts?
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C
That's a great question. I mean, I think that there's so much more accessibility for newer artists to make merch these days that there really wasn't even, like 10 years ago where you would really need someone to hook you up with a designer and you would need to, you know, have someone handle fulfillment and all of these things. And often the merchandise that resulted was like we were saying, just kind of a plain thing with your name on it. Whereas these days there's so many new sort of direct shipment services. I know even companies like Amazon have them where artists who are in their system can upload their design and, you know, have it printed only when it's ordered, rather than needing to get all this stock and then sell it. So I think that there's. There's a lot more accessibility to selling merchants. And I think that newer. Newer artists are kind of thinking bigger about and more out of the box, I guess, about what that could look like. Like those examples we were talking about earlier of chopsticks and jewelry and rain boots and all of these things. I think the new generation is. Is thinking beyond it. And also in terms of the fashion brand element that Nick was talking about earlier or the fashion of it all, we do see that not just for new artists, but also new generations of fans, something that they Value in our surveys is actually subtlety, which is interesting. They like merch that's sort of if you know, you know, and not necessarily blasting the name of the artist. So I think that's also feeding into some of the new merch designs we're seeing as well.
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B
Let's talk to Dennis in Newfoundland. Hey, Dennis, what do you have?
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D
Oh my God, have I got stuff. And I'm going to show my age because my merch collecting began in 1973 at a the Nassau Coliseum out on Long Island. And my sister realized that I was playing her thick as a brick album vinyl to death. So she took me to see Jethro Tull. And since then, back in the 80s, I became editor and publisher of a fan magazine in the States called Living in the Past. And we started doing conventions, you know, late 80s, early 90s, and all the way up until 2014. And of course we were selling merch that was, you know, blessed by the band themselves. Ian Anderson was always very supportive. He kind of frowned on the bootlegging. So I don't do much of that.
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B
We're gonna stop right there because we want to get in.
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E
We have one woman who' called Kathy, you're on the air.
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J
Oh, hey. Hey.
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H
Hi.
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J
How are you doing?
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B
Okay. Got about a minute.
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J
Okay. I have a no nukes T shirt from a concert. I guess it was like 1979, which I gave to my son in law and he framed it and hasn't it hanging up in his office. And I got a Grateful Dead 1977 Madison Square Garden T shirt that I have in a Ziploc bag in my drawer hanging onto it. Just for sentimental reasons. It was a great time in my life and just a lot of fun.
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E
Thanks so much for calling in.
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B
Nick.
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E
How do you see concert merch evolving over the next five years? You got about a minute.
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F
I think concert merchant lifestyle brands for artists, they're merging. I mean, what Justin Bieber's done with Skylark is really interesting. Pop up shops in Japan and people waiting in line just to get that, even though they're not going to see a show. So I think that, you know, with artists who are really, really brand friendly and innovative, the concert is just one part of the overall brand strategy. And I think, you know, it'll continue to evolve and just become something that we wear and people just like, to Tatiana's point, it's if, you know, you know, but they look good.
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E
We talking about the business of concert merch and the music industry with Tatiana Siriano and Nick Adler, thanks for joining us. We really appreciate your experience and your thoughts.
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F
Thank you so much for having us.
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A
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