"The Merch Panel" at Canadian Music Week 2022

"The Merch Panel" at Canadian Music Week 2022

Last Friday marked the close of another great summer music conference - CMW 2022. Single Music was fortunate enough to put together a panel discussion with some of our close friends. While the panel’s subject technically was about “merch” the conversation focused on e-commerce strategies and how artists might best connect with their fans directly.


Special thanks to David Hazan for stepping in to moderate the panel last minute.

What started as a conversation of modern day music merchandise widened to include digital merch and how that might play into artist’s direct-to-fan strategies.

Well versed in the topic of NFTs and their role for artists is Robby Towns, Co-Founder and Head of Strategy at GoodCopBadCop. Last month he led the NFT keynote at Music Biz in Nashville and broke the relatively complex topic down to its basic aspects for a general music-audience.

This panel allowed Robby to get a little more in the weeds with how GoodCopBadCop viewed NFTs as the logical next step in the larger world of music e-commerce.

We were excited to be joined by Kyle Riggle, Business Planning Director of the Creator Program at Shopify. Single clearly trusts Shopify and constantly directs artists and labels to the platform - so it was refreshing to hear from Kyle the focus Shopify puts on creatives, brands and merchants in general. On the topic of developing a brand, Kyle said:

“On Amazon, no one knows that the artist is the one selling the goods. On Shopify the fan knows that and pays the artist directly.”

Single was also joined by Mike Fiebach, CEO of Main Factor. His company, founded in 2020, is already one of the leaders in the entertainment e-commerce space. Mike stressed the pace of that this industry is moving towards d2c:

“Artists, managers and merch companies are all realizing the transition to a d2c world. Shopify will be at the forefront of that and Mainfactor will be at the forefront of that”.

 
And finally we couldn’t help pulling some thoughts on all of this from our CEO Tommy Stalknecht:

“Omni channel is a term you’ll start to hear quite a bit, which just means selling across multiple channels from one single point. Shopify is the best at that because you maintain full control of your data across channels.”

“Connecting d2c data with any other channel’s data is the easiest way to surprise and delight fans. Reward your top d2c supporters with a VIP experience when you’re out on tour. Thank your top listeners across DSPs with a discount code - and use that to see which audience is most engaged with your storefront”.


Find Single in the Shopify app store and get started today.

 

The idea here is that the act of simply selling something online is one thing. But there’s an upper bound in terms of growth that a dropshipping business can reach. Managing relationships with customers, understanding them and building a lasting brand is best done in a d2c way, and Shopify happens to be the best at that. The many high-end brands that use Shopify speak volumes to the power of the platform (Nocta, Brain Dead, Kylie, Golf Wang, Bape & countless others) 

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