As soon as Roxanne de Bastion comes off stage, there is one thing on her mind – getting down to run her merchandise stall.
“The quicker the better – sometimes it feels a bit like those scenes in Spinal Tap, rushing down corridors to find how to get there,” said the singer-songwriter, whose latest album was produced by the former Suede guitarist, Bernard Butler. On a recent tour, selling copies of You & Me, We Are the Same afterwards “was the difference between making a loss and being able to pay my rent for three months”.
Selling vinyl and merchandise at gigs is no longer an afterthought for artists – sales there are starting to rival more traditional methods. About half of De Bastion’s annual income from music sales comes from selling vinyl at gigs, while most of the rest comes directly via her website. Her experience is shared by most artists not selling out arenas.
David Manders, who runs the Liquid Label and manages bands including LIFE, Nubiyan Twist and Nuha Ruby Ra, said they make about 30% of vinyl sales at gigs. “It wasn’t that high 10 or 20 years ago,” he said.
This reliance on gigs is affecting the charts, Manders believes, because artists and managers do not usually hire the technology that the Official Charts Company uses to register sales. As a result, emerging artists miss out on higher chart positions at the expense of established “heritage” acts who tend to spend less time touring.
Blur drummer Dave Rowntree said at the Featured Artists Coalition AGM in November that a mere 3,000 cassette sales played a bigger role in getting his band’s latest album The Ballad of Darren to No 1 last year than millions of Spotify streams.
English Teacher’s latest single, The World’s Biggest Paving Slab, reached No 5 in the official vinyl chart last year but the rising stars of indie music, whose first album This Could Be Texas is released in April, are just as eager to get to the merch stand as De Bastion.
“I think the main source of income for us is probably the merch that we sell at gigs,” said lead singer Lily Fontaine. “Whatever you get paid for shows gets spent on hiring equipment or travel or accommodation. So it’s really important being able to sell something.” And not just vinyl – the band made hand-painted CDs and sometimes do one-minute sketch portraits for their fans.
While larger venues often take a cut of the merchandise of 20% or more, smaller ones usually do not, including the 200 hosting independent venue week (IVW), which starts on Monday.
“Independent venues are there to nurture and support and most of them have dedicated merch areas now,” said IVW founder Sybil Bell. The Half Moon in Putney, west London, has taken this one stage further and now has a permanent record store area, and has tie-ups with four local record shops – this week it will be running a pop-up shop with the help of Level Crossing Records for IVW.
Artists, labels and venues are all sensitive to the suggestion that they might be taking business away from record shops, which they feel will continue to be an important part of the industry. The growth of vinyl at gigs is another way the boundaries between venue and shops have blurred.
Shops such as the Rough Trade chain and Resident Music in Brighton often host live performances, while Third Man, a label founded by Jack White of the White Stripes, has a record shop in Soho with a venue downstairs at the Blue Basement with “very little divide, intentionally, between the stage and the audience”, said director of retail and events Molly Murray-Ayres.
Because although money is important for the artists, the thing they value most about the merch stand is the direct connection with fans – something impossible to achieve through anonymous streaming services.
“This is where relationships are forged and you meet people who support your music for years,” De Bastion said. “In those moments afterwards, what someone felt watching the show is something they’ll share with us.
“My record is about grief and losing my father. I’ve had the most incredible moments of human connection at the merch stand, sharing tears with strangers, because we’ve just shared an experience or tapped into something. That’s what’s so great about live music.”
