Investigation

Steve Parker is uniquely placed to look back on how merchandising has impacted the face of the music business. As well as having been a manager and agent for artists as diverse as 10cc, John Martin and Uriah Heep, he now owns and edits Audience magazine, a globally distributed publication for the contemporary live music business.

'When I started managing bands in the early '70s,' Parker tells me, 'you virtually had to pay people to wear a t-shirt with your artist's logo on it. But wearing a band's t-shirt was a real sign of allying with the group, because you could only get the shirts at gigs. By the 1980s, however, retail clothing shops were starting to sell artist t-shirts. That meant teenage girls who knew nothing about the bands could buy the shirt because they thought it looked cool.

'Nowadays, it's about building your artist into a brand, and there's money in it if you do it right, but there are significant costs involved getting the items manufactured and, in the case of t-shirts, having them printed. Then you have to package them, transport them, and pay a commission – maybe 20% – to the venue. You need to create a space in which to sell them, and pay people to actually sell them, maybe another 10%. So the margins are tight. But if you carry the right merchandise, such as t-shirts and tour programmes, it can be profitable.

'You can also have a live LP available for sale at concerts. We do it with 10cc by recording one of the early shows on a tour, and we can have it ready for sale in the venues ten days later, with the tracks in the right order, and a message from the band, which is what the fans want.

'A word of warning though, if you over-order on tour merchandise you can be left with a ton of stuff you can't get rid of when the tour ends, because you have to create new merch for every tour. People come to a show and they want to take a souvenir away with them, even if it's just a keyring or a lanyard. With the rise of online, however, you can have on-demand t-shirts so you don't have to store them anywhere. Also, t-shirts can now be sold online even after the tour has ended, because there are fans in Japan, Russia and elsewhere who will buy them.'