{"id":6143,"date":"2011-01-12T18:58:57","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T02:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/?p=6143"},"modified":"2022-02-01T10:32:42","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T10:32:42","slug":"band-merch-politics-price-matching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/band-merch-politics-price-matching\/","title":{"rendered":"Band Merch: The Politics of Price Matching"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alternative Press has a great post about the\u00a0 real deal of merch price matching.\u00a0 Price matching is a practice in which the headlining band on a tour set the merch prices. If that band sell their custom printed t-shirts<\/a> for $40, every other band on the bill must comply with that price. It insures that opening bands are not able to sell their merch for cheaper than the headliners so they do not have an advantage to sell more merch.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is \u201ca request from the headlining band asking the support bands not to undercut them in merch. It looks bad\u2014and could affect sales\u2014if one band is selling their merch for considerably less than another [band]. It\u2019s essentially forcing a monopoly in the market for that show.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recently, 3OH!3<\/a>\u2019s Nathaniel Motte penned a thoughtful, lengthy blog on his band\u2019s website decrying the practice of \u201cprice matching.\u201d The blog was spawned from a specific instance at a holiday radio show in Sacramento, California, where 3OH!3 were required to price their custom t-shirts printing near you<\/a> at a equivalent cost to the headliner\u2019s merch\u2014an amount Motte and bandmate Sean Foreman deemed too expensive for their fans. The incident, which Motte describes in detail in his post, is indicative of a larger issue, one that affects bands and music fans across the board. Motte\u2019s post raises a slew of intriguing questions: What is price matching? Why is it done? Who does it harm? And, most importantly, what is and what should be the purpose of selling custom band merch<\/a>?<\/span><\/p>\n

DAVID GALEA<\/strong> of The Agency Group, who books Paramore<\/a>, Dredg<\/a>, Relient K and Four Year Strong<\/a>, explains that price matching is just one element the headliner controls in the business of touring. \u201cThe headliner dictates everything from production to amount of merch items, to number of comps the support gets, to how long they play,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is common practice for support acts to fall in line with what the headliner is dictating on any and all things\u2014from clubs to arenas.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

3OH!3 manager MIKE KAMINSKY<\/strong> describes price matching as \u201ca request from the headlining band asking the support bands not to undercut them in merch. It looks bad\u2014and could affect sales\u2014if one band is selling their merch for considerably less than another [band]. It\u2019s essentially forcing a monopoly in the market for that show.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The ability of the headliner to determine all these aspects on a tour is a privilege that Galea believes must be earned, and that there should be a balance between respecting the band taking you on tour with them and standing up for your own fans once you\u2019ve built a fanbase. \u201cSimply put, that is the right of the headliner, and they have earned this right,\u201d Galea says.\u00a0\u201cA first-of-four [act] on a show complaining about the practices of a headliner, frankly, is inappropriate.\u00a0This isn\u2019t utopia; from the biggest band to the smallest band, this still acts as a business, and any band who tells you different is probably lying to save face.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But what if you are the first of four on a tour and haven\u2019t yet established enough fans to earn those privileges? For a smaller, up-and-coming band, each T-shirt and album sold at a show can mean gas and food for the next day. In that scenario, being forced to sell your shirts at a higher price can mean you don\u2019t sell any<\/em>, which in turn hurts your ability to travel to the next venue. BAY DARIZ<\/strong>, singer\/guitarist for Los Angeles band SOME HEAR EXPLOSIONS<\/strong>, has found that sometimes there is little thought about the fact that merch sales directly allow small bands to literally continue touring. \u201cThe money from merch goes directly into our gas tank to get us to the next city,\u201d he says. \u201cIt’s extremely important we sell enough merch to keep going. Many times people want free shirts and CDs, \u00a0and I don’t think they realize how expensive touring is and how little money we really make. We don’t travel with a crew, so we do all our own merch sales. We have to become salespeople as well as artists\/performers, \u00a0and that’s a tightrope to walk sometimes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Read full article here.<\/span><\/p>\n

____________________________________________________________________________<\/span><\/p>\n

Unified Manufacturing<\/strong>\u00a0is an L.A. -based one-stop-shop that offers very affordable CD\/DVD\/USB replication, custom printing, promotional products, warehousing and fulfillment and many more. If you need an Instant Quote on a project and you want FREE SHIPPING, simply\u00a0CLICK HERE<\/a>.<\/span> \t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alternative Press has a great post about the\u00a0 real deal of merch price matching.\u00a0 Price matching is a practice in which the headlining band on a tour set the merch prices. If that band sell their custom printed t-shirts for $40, every other band on the bill must comply with that price. It insures that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-unified-manufacturing-news"],"contentshake_article_id":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6143"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34543,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6143\/revisions\/34543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}