Prime Placement: Here’s How Artists Can Create and Sell Their Official Merch on Amazon Music
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You’ve recorded new music and uploaded it to Amazon Music, wrapped up another round of tour dates, and now it’s time to give your diehard fans even more new merch so they can show off their fandom all year long.
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But outside of selling your latest memorabilia at a venue (and inevitably running out of all your small or medium sizes right away), offering your apparel and accessories online for the first time can be a tough thing to navigate. Enter Amazon Music for Artists, which along with updating artists with almost instant streaming and Alexa voice request data, helps to get your new merch in fans’ hands faster than ever – no strings attached.
From vintage-looking graphic T-shirts to apparel commemorating a special tour, there’s no shortage of fresh, officially licensed items for the music-obsessed to find in the Artist Merch Shop on Amazon these days. After all, some of today’s biggest artists have something for their most devoted listeners. Musicians and artists from Dolly Parton to Juice WRLD offer Amazon-exclusive designs and music releases with the help of the Amazon Music Merch team. And with the addition of the Artist Merch Shop now available to browse on the Amazon Music app, it’s no surprise that it’s become the world’s coolest shop for fans to pick up new gear, toys, and more – all with one tap. In other words, you can actually buy the gear at the same time you’re listening to your top songs of the year directly in the Amazon Music app. Amazon Music makes it stress-free for fans to buy logo tees, caps, and music all in one virtual destination.
So how does it work and how can you start selling your gear? Amazon gives musicians a few simple options to get gear onto its virtual shelves. The fastest way to get started is through Amazon Merch on Demand, the retailer’s, well, print-on-demand service that lets you create merchandise and make it available to customers across Amazon in up to seven different regions. With your Amazon Music for Artists account, you can get expedited access to the Merch on Demand service, and you won’t encounter upfront costs, inventory you have to track, or unexpected monthly fees that derail your budget. You can simply upload your designs, select your base products, and recommend your selling price for each country you want to make your wares available – simple as that. Amazon takes care of the rest while you earn revenue from each sale, which can be tracked in your Merch on Demand dashboard.
Artists who’ve tried figuring out the complicated world of selling and shipping merch themselves will appreciate that Amazon also manages the tedious logistics of the post-sale process. That includes handling things like printing labels, offering customer support, and even processing returns if needed, which get sent off for recycling along with any misprints that might occur during the production process. In short, Amazon covers the most complicated parts of selling your music merchandise online (and does it in a way that’s easy for fans to access). Along with your own shop, it’s a no-brainer way to try to generate more revenue and to connect with more fans online.
Even cooler, Amazon makes it easy for you to sell and ship all over the world. In fact, artists and bands can promote their memorabilia across seven Amazon storefronts and ship to over 100 countries, making it possible for you to potentially reach millions of fans (and Amazon customers) online and on their phones. A bonus: Amazon says that its Merch on Demand service uses water-based inks for printing, as well as ships packages using partially recycled materials to boot.
Meanwhile, musicians can also register with Amazon’s Brand Registry without paying a single cent. From there, you can start to build and create your own Amazon storefront à la the Stones or Doja Cat to sell your items, manage your advertisements, and, using your Amazon Music for Artists account, even curate your collection and how it looks when fans are listening to you on the Amazon Music app.
To do that, you can sign up for an Amazon Music for Artists account online, choose the items you want to appear on your Amazon Music artist profile, and that’s it. You can even sell your existing merch using the Fulfillment by Amazon and Self-fulfillment options from Amazon’s stable of services. Once you’re all set up, you can share QR codes directing concertgoers to your merch, or send out your shop’s link on your social channels or newsletters.
The bottom line: Amazon Music is the ultimate online destination for finding – and now, for musicians, selling – the coolest new merch online. Ready to get started? Check out Amazon Music for Artists to find more details.
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