Behind The Merch Desk: Internationals Touring Australia

Behind The Merch Desk: CD Sales

At a March show by American hard rock band Between The Buried And Me [pictured below], I visited The Hi-Fi’s merch desk afterwards, hoping to buy a CD to show my appreciation. While the wall behind the desk was adorned with a range of clothing apparel, a handwritten sign read: “No CDs - go download it.”

BTBAM: Disc-less in Aus.

Disappointment aside, this got me thinking: how prevalent is this occurrence among the international artists that tour Australia? It’s long been my personal preference to buy music directly from the artist at live shows, from local bands here in Brisbane up to the biggest touring acts. Stripped of the record store and digital retailer middle-men that cut into artists’ potential profit, I’d assumed that purchasing music from the merch desk was the quickest way to improving the artist’s bottom line.

Brian Taranto, managing director of Sydney-based merchandise and touring specialists Love Police, admits that a band will earn “marginally more” if a CD is bought at a merch desk, as opposed to online or in a record store. However, he states that the very act of offering CDs to the consumer at a live show is “largely a box-ticking exercise for record companies to say, ‘Yes, we’re selling music at shows’.” For the merchandising company, Taranto says, it’s a “painful and time-wasting experience. There are rare exceptions, but generally, throughout my 25 years of merchandising experience, it is a waste of time. I say that because CDs generally don’t sell. There’s a procedure involved with purchasing, paying for and returning product to the majority of record labels that is an accounting time-waster, unless there is a quick, clean and easy financial and logistical solution.”

According to Simon Lonergan, owner of TSP Merchandising Australia, the only way for CDs to be sourced for international acts is for the artist to ship them over, or for the merchandiser to buy the discs wholesale from an Australian record company. Both options are expensive, which is why the profit margins on CDs are so low. “The band knows they’re not going to make much money from CDs,” Lonergan says, “So they generally don’t want CDs hurting their t-shirt profits. You can get the music in other ways. If you can download it, that means that no-one has to freight discs around.” TSP handle around 150 international tours per year, including the recent AC/DC and Pearl Jam tours. Of those 150 tours, Lonergan estimates that only 15-20% request that the merch desk offers CDs for sale.

“I’ve been in the merch industry my whole life, and CD sales at live shows have never been good,” he tells me, effectively putting to bed my sneaking suspicion that consumer reluctance to buy the physical product is influenced by an increasing preference for digital music. At the independent end of the spectrum, artists don’t seem to be faring much better from live CD sales. Brisbane-based Lick It Media has presented the Brisbane legs of Australian tours by Crystal Castles, Metronomy and Datarock.

Lick It partner Matt Rabbidge suggests that in these instances, shirts are the primary merchandise offering. “In recent years, CDs seem to have become a second focus. I think that this comes down to the younger crowd these bands are attracting, who normally want to ‘wear’ their likes and dislikes. Bands see this as free promotion; if they can make a buck out of it while they do it, then so be it.”

From the front line as event promoter, Rabbidge doesn’t believe artists are losing out too much from CD sales. “I think that good bands are just getting smarter about how they make money now,” he says.” It comes down to more touring, playing festivals, and offering merch and digital downloads.” While TSP handled merchandising sales for the Australian leg of AC/DC’s Black Ice world tour - whose merch sales in this country alone grossed tens of millions of dollars - Taranto’s Love Police sold product for the tour’s support act, Wolfmother, whose shiny disc sales numbered just “a handful” across the whole tour. “That’s the big picture side of it: why would you spend significant money to see AC/DC and Wolfmother, then want to buy a CD?” Taranto asks. “Surely fans know their music by then; if not, they’ll buy it the next day. You can’t really put on a CD, like you can a shirt.”

On the logistical side, Lonergan suggests that the potential benefits for international artists looking to sell discs at shows are often offset by frustrations. “If you import something into this country, it’s got to go through a process customs. There’s a lot of paperwork, and I think the smaller bands decide it’s too much of a pain in the arse.” In his mind, the decision to nix offering CDs at live shows comes from a purely financial perspective. “I can see why a lot of artists don’t want to offer CDs: they think it’s going to take away a t-shirt sale. Why would they want to a sell a CD, when they could make four or five times the amount of profit through selling a t-shirt?”

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What’s your experience with buying music from the merch desk at concerts?

Do you prefer to sample before the show and buy direct from the band afterwards, or are you more interested in wearing your musical allegiances in t-shirt form?

Tagged as: australia, clothing, concert, international, live, merch, music, sales, touring