alt Hacker NewsThe truth that haunts the Ramones: 'They sold more T-shirts than records'
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Well, Brian Eno said of Velvet Underground's first album that it didn't sell many copies but everyone who bought it started a band.
I’m a big fan of rock and metal music and often go to concerts. I’ll always buy a t-shirt of the main band I go to see, even if I don’t particularly vibe with the design, because I know it’s an additional way to support a band I like.
In my opinion that alone is worth it, but it is a fun piece of memorabilia. Although I don’t wear most of them in my day to day, especially the older ones.
I’ve got shirts from about 2008 onwards, which is the year I first went to see Sabaton and Disturbed.
I read that Aerosmith made more money from Guitar Hero game royalties than from their albums. And it's been true for a long time that most acts make more from touring and merch than song sales.
My favorite example of this is Joy Division. They’re the band with that cool white-on-black ridge line plot shirt. If you haven’t listened to their music before, go check it out. You probably won’t like it very much. I don’t know how many records or shirts they sold, but their ratio of shirts sold to records sold has to be one of the wildest.
If the Ramones put their name on all sorts of merchandise does that make them sellouts?
I joke, of course, and I'm a big Ramones fan. I've had numerous iterations of that shirt over the years. I often use them as an example when discussing "what is good art?" They are one of the most influential bands of all time and yet they were terrible musicians.
I dunno, Seems like author of article is projecting, I feel like most people would be happy if they made that much of an cultural impact
Weird that the perception of value is how much money a product makes. Sure they sold more t-shirts than records, but without the records the t-shirts would have been worthless.
I'm not sure if this an urban legend but, it's cool anyway. The name "Ramones" is an adaptation from "Jamon", Paul Jamon, a fake name Paul Mccartney used in hotel check-ins to avoid stalking fans. So most if not all Ramones members through history changed their last name, family name, to "Ramone" to honor the tradition and be a Remone forever in Rock history. Again, this is cool enough for me on top of the great music they've made.
Man it's really too bad that that's the headline, because it's a great tribute to Arturo Vega, and I don't understand why it has to come at the expense of such a seminal band. If what Eno said about the Velvet Underground is true, then album sales don't account for much in the grand scheme of things anyway.
I highly recommend Simon Reynold's history of post-punk, Rip It Up and Start Again. An oversimplified version of his argument is that punk as a movement barely existed. It was an extremely brief cultural moment, represented by a small number of bands, the most influential of which (The Sex Pistols) was basically manufactured.
There wasn't enough to that initial punk sound other than energy and posturing. What punk really did was act as a catalyst for an explosion of musical creativity that followed.
> what is widely regarded as the album that invented punk
This sort of thing becomes endless debate, but I'm still gonna say The Stooges were way ahead of them (yeah, noticed Iggy in one of the article's pictures).
Shawn Stussy printed shirts to promote his surfboards and ended up being the originator of “streetwear”
Well that goes for most bands doesn't it?
There's this local band. I go to their concerts at least once per year. But we also own 4 of their hoodies in our family of 3. I bet they made more money from the hoodies than from the concerts.
Has anyone ever read, or even seen, THRASHER skateboard magazine?
They're played every day on the radio, on streaming services, etc. Billions of listens vs. thousands (?) of shirts.
Motörhead and Nirvana are probably in the same situation.
Maybe fifteen years ago, I saw a teen wearing a Pink Floyd shirt and my internal thought was to ask her which albums she liked (sarcastically, I was pretty jaded at the time). I didn't approach her, of course, that'd be mean.
But years later I remembered that I bought a Pink Floyd tshirt at Hot Topic (for The Wall, scene with the apocalyptic archway with WW2 bombers / planes[0]). I knew who they were as a band and I knew some songs from radio. I didn't really know their music. I didn't become a huge fan until years later. I was that teen girl, turns out.
0. https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a4/6e/50/a46e50cd5ac9f67e15ddfd0ba...
I find their music repetitive. I could certainly listen to one or two songs, but not a whole album or show. And I would have no qualms wearing a T-shirt of theirs.
So there you have it.
I was talking with a friend who is a promoter and runs a regular dj party kind of thing, not unlike 'boiler room' back in the early days. he makes all his money selling merch.
Donald Trump, despite his numerous financial schemes, makes a lot of his money selling shirts, or hats, or phones or credit cards with his name on it. it's probably the only legitimate business operations that he has.
it's kinda crazy how, when you boil it all down, so much of the american economy is just selling merch
I get a lot of content about "how to promote your band"* and it's almost ALL about finding "superfans" you can sell merch to - so the actual art is reduced to ads for t-shirts
* I've been in the same (unsuccessful) band since 1987 - obvs I have a day job too
Fascinating! Always love these backstories. The Ramones were brilliant - I don't have a favourite album but my most-watched DVD is The Ramones Story
So the band's image resonated more than their music.
Invented punk? nah.
Who buys music these days? A few people might buy LPs but that eats up storage. Streaming doesn’t do very much for the bottom line.
I don't mean to be crude, but how can it haunt them, when they're all dead?
well you can’t pirate a t-shirt or hear it on the radio or cover it at a local show, and it’s super easy to make a new t-shirt design compared to an album, maybe I’m overthinking this but it doesn’t seem like a surprising metric, especially for a punk band
I think that’s probably just a universal truth in many industries. How many people have donated to the Linux foundation versus how many people have bought some sort of Tux merch?
And why should that fact be haunting? The point of being in a band isn’t to sell records, but to make music. The only reason the t-shirts sold is because the music was good and they were iconic. Where is the ghost?
Marketing has become the pinnacle form of art.
Seems like The Ramones were way ahead of their time, whether they knew it or not. Before the digital age, most bands made the bulk of their their money from record sales. Concert tours were just promotional events for the latest album. That model has since been flipped to what The Ramones were doing 50 years ago - "music sales" earns little compared to concerts and merchandising. Now that's punk rock! LOL
The Ramones are most defintly un haunted, doubly so by anything as subjective as the "truth" They captured, held up, and released the feeling that litteraly countless humans have experienced, and wished, as it turns out,to display as something "gotten off there chest"
The power of "Kill a Commie for Mommy".
Isn't it normal and typical for musical acts to make more money from concert tours and merchandise sales than the music itself?
I mean, yeah. I need to buy the album once. I can buy multiple shirts, posters, etc.
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Made my day. Thank you
I was wondering the same thing about Iron Maiden the other day - they seem more of a merch company than a heavy metal band these days.
You can get Iron Maiden beer, Iron Maiden wine, Iron Maiden sunglasses etc. let alone the common merch like T-shirts.
Given many more people can buy merch than can buy a concert ticket (which has inherently limited numbers) I wonder how the two revenue sources compare.
I was reading an interview with the band "Agriculture" recently and they had a really interesting take on this. From this interview https://www.treblezine.com/agriculture-interview-quiet-viole... :
"DM: We exist as a band because we sell t-shirts. Our job is that we sell t-shirts and the way we promote those t-shirts is by playing music. If we were talking strictly economically, that’s just a fact.
LL: Weirdly, it’s also our most direct engagement with the money we make and with our fans. We’re often selling our own shirts at the merch table; that’s actually how we talk to a lot of fans and get feedback on our sets. We get cash in our hands; that’s one of the most direct economic exchanges in our lives as musicians. So, it is funny because it seems cynical, but it’s actually one of the more grounded exchanges in what we do."
As it turns out, I had a nice little chat with their drummer when I bought one of their tshirts.