Why You Should Buy Official Merch

 I can actually hear you cringing at the article title as I type this, but it is important. And of course I’m not saying that you should spend money you don’t have or that unofficial merch is always wrong, I understand that the cost of official merch for some artists can be totally ridiculous and if you can’t spare that money that’s okay. That said, you should definitely buy merch if you can afford it. 

Streaming, as I’ve regularly talked about on here, isn’t a great way of generating revenue as artists earn fractions of a penny per stream. Even touring can be expensive with all of its associated costs. Merch and physical copies though, particularly for small artists, belong to the artist once the manufacturers and anyone else involved is paid, so it’s a good way of making sure that some of the money you spend gets to them. Also, you can show your support by advertising their music in public, possibly drawing in new listeners. Not to mention you get a super cool piece of clothing out of it. 

It’s no secret that t-shirts are expensive to make. The Lavender Menace’s t-shirts cost us something like £11.90 each. For this reason, you’d be unlikely to find a t-shirt even for a small band like us at under £13-£15. But it’s worth it, t-shirts are the best way we’ve found to make money so far which can go into funding our future projects and more merch. And, again, you get a super cool t-shirt out of it. 

So, buy official merch if you want to support your favourite artists!