alt Hacker News1. I understand the truth of it
2. The inefficiency bugs me
I.e. I want to support the band, but feel like only a fraction of the money spent on merch goes to the target. Same with websites that have mugs and such. I don't want another mug, I don't want to pay 5.99 for shipping, I don't need to support the white box oem mug manufacturer.
But I guess in the real pragmatical world, that's the support mechanism that actually works :)
Replies
Merch is the most profitable thing for the band. They can mark it up however much they want. $35 tee shirts are very profitable.
Yeah, also the fact that most venues take a cut of merch sales really dampens the idea that buying merch directly from artists is the best way to put money in their pocket.
I even recall going to a show many years ago where the lead singer refused to sell his t-shirts at the venue and implored us all to meet him outside at their tour van for direct sales. I don't think he got invited back to perform there!
It's the only thing that works at scale.
If you want to support them you're more than welcome to message them and ask for their Venmo, or reach out to their agent (if they have one) or them directly and ask who to make the check out to. That just doesn't work at scale.
Just give them money directly without the merch. Or purchase their music, most (small) bands sell it directly as well.
> I.e. I want to support the band, but feel like only a fraction of the money spent on merch goes to the target. Same with websites that have mugs and such. I don't want another mug, I don't want to pay 5.99 for shipping, I don't need to support the white box oem mug manufacturer.
I know some musicians are using Patreon but patreon takes a cut as well.
Now Although I don't like github but one of the last things that I like about github is that github sponsorships don't charge anything extra than the costs it would have itself and you get chargeback protection.
Would there be a genuine interest in using Github for sponsorships by Musicians, are there any real world musicians* who are doing that?
> I want to support the band, but feel like only a fraction of the money spent on merch goes to the target.
Maybe you don't have any friends that are in a band, but if it's the band members or friends of the band selling the merch, they are getting 100% of the profit. They design the shirts, they pay for the printing of the shirts, they then sell the shirts directly with their own hands. There's no middleman taking cuts. Now, if you're buying their merch from some 3rd party website, that site probably takes a cut. Some bands selling merch on their own website could still be coming directly from the band if one of them, or again a friend, sets up the site with their own accounts using square/stripe/etc and deals with the fulfillment themselves they are minimizing cuts as well.