\n\t\t\tTrending on Billboard\t\t<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\n\tBefore Doja Cat headlined her first arena tour in late 2023, Amazon\u2019s merch team approached her managers with a proposition. \u201cWhat if fans could buy T-shirts and hoodies without waiting in line at merch counters?\u201d they asked. \u201cWhat if Amazon shipped those T-shirts and hoodies to their homes, so they wouldn\u2019t have to carry them all night?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThat was super attractive to us,\u201d says Josh Kaplan<\/strong>, the singer\u2019s co-manager. \u201cMost of her fans at shows dance, and having to worry about where you put your merch is cumbersome. If there\u2019s any way to make that easier, we\u2019re interested.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n \t\t\t\t\tMeet The Exec Who Thinks Merch Can Be \u2018More Powerful Than A Simple Transaction\u2019\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n \n\tSix years ago, Amazon execs had the revelation that music stars made much of their revenue on merchandise sales and formed a U.S.-based team to work with them. By 2023, when the team began working with Doja Cat, Amazon\u2019s technology involved QR codes at venues that allowed fans to instantly buy artist gear and have it shipped to their homes. In the years since, that initiative has morphed into Just Walk Out, a technology that uses cameras, sensors, AI and radio-frequency identification (RFID) so fans can grab a merch item and automatically pay for it simply by walking out.<\/p>\n \n\tOver the last year, Just Walk Out has evolved into the centerpiece of the retail giant\u2019s music-merch empire. So far, Amazon has deployed it at Mariah Carey\u2018s Las Vegas residency and LE SSERAFIM\u2018s tour-stop pop-ups in Seattle and Los Angeles. \u201cIt became apparent quickly that queue-busting technology would benefit fans and help artists sell more merch at the venue,\u201d says Kelsey Tubbs<\/strong>, Amazon Music\u2019s artist merch and physical music head. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at how we evolve this even further.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tJust Walk Out is \u201ca game-changer,\u201d says Jules Ferree<\/strong>, brands and ventures president for HYBE America, whose Source Music is the label home of LE SSERAFIM. \u201cThe frictionless transaction for the attendees was so powerful to witness. Our typical long lines could move at a different pace, which allowed us to pace it differently within the space.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn addition to disrupting long concert lines, Amazon\u2019s artist-merch program includes online Amazon-branded stores for Doja Cat, LE SSERAFIM and Peso Pluma; a Carey holiday store including a $160 Mariah Claus-with-sleigh-and-reindeer lawn inflatable; and a Drake \u201cimmersive virtual shopping experience\u201d selling jigsaw puzzles, hair clips, birthday balloons and dice sets. In a statement, Carey calls her Amazon Music deal \u201cone of the most forward-thinking partnerships I\u2019ve experienced.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n \t\t\t\t\tDistroKid Artists Can Now Create Custom T-Shirts, Mugs & More With New Direct-to-Fan\u00a0Platform\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n \n\t\u201cWe\u2019re able to develop products that aren\u2019t just wearables, [like] T-shirts and hats and typical things that artists release \u2014 we\u2019re able to do a body pillow that has Drake\u2019s face on it, and it sells out,\u201d says Matte Babel<\/strong>, chief brand officer at DreamCrew, Drake\u2019s creative studio, which produces films, TV shows and other projects. \u201cThings like that take a little more development time and finessing. The Amazon team was willing to do new things. Sometimes [when] you deal with these big-box retailers or huge marketplaces, they\u2019re not willing to bend.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAmazon\u2019s entry into the global music-merch market, which MIDiA Music estimates will hit $16.3 billion in 2030, up from $14 billion in 2024, is not hugely surprising. All three major labels have merch companies, and top brands are participating, too: American Express has partnered on merch with Billie Eilish, and American Apparel has a merch partnership with Live Nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTubbs emphasizes that Amazon\u2019s team, counter to the historically male-dominated music-merch business, in which top execs once employed motorcycle gangs to combat bootleg T-shirts at concerts, is primarily led by women. \u201cFrom legal to finance and accounting to our head of production, brand management, tour operations \u2014 that is unlike what I\u2019ve personally experienced,\u201d says Julia Heiser<\/strong>, the team\u2019s head of live music merch. \u201cIt\u2019s been an added benefit on how we\u2019ve talked about this to artists.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAdds Tubbs: \u201cWe haven\u2019t seen a lot of change in this space over several decades. You need diverse voices. We have wonderful, smart people who haven\u2019t been in the room before who are now in the room. That brings something different to artist conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFor decades, Amazon Music has combined its physical and digital resources to compete with rivals, from Apple to Spotify to physical music and retail stores. In the early days of MP3 downloading, when Apple\u2019s iTunes dominated the market, Amazon secured market share by using physical CDs and T-shirts to draw consumers to its MP3 store. Since then, the company has famously beefed up its Prime service and home-delivery offering and is now using those assets in the music-merch space. Music fans can use Amazon, for example, to buy merch for an upcoming concert, receive it within a day or two, then wear it to the event.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n \t\t\t\t\tAmazon Music Launches In-App Merch Integration, Exclusive Artist\u00a0Collections\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n \n\tAfter Amazon Music partnered with Beyonc\u00e9 for the 2023 Renaissance tour, according to Heiser, the team discovered a key purchasing trend: Two days before the tour date in a given city, fans\u2019 Beyonc\u00e9 merch purchases began to slowly increase, peaking the day before the show. After the shows, \u201cThere was this halo of two days,\u201d Heiser adds. \u201cIn some ways, looking back, it was, like, \u2018Duh.\u2019 But it was also this insightful piece of information. Artists are potentially missing out on that [demand] with tour merch when it\u2019s exclusively available [at the venue].\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTrue to Amazon\u2019s roots as an innovator, the company\u2019s merch operation has, in six short years, moved beyond just selling merch to actually changing the way people buy it. \u201cThe first step was, \u2018Merch is a big part of artist revenues and how artists are building their brands and careers, so let\u2019s build a merch team,’\u201d Tubbs says. \u201cThat\u2019s where the seeds of it came from: We launched this business, then we realized, \u2018If we don\u2019t offer solutions around this tour-merch space, we\u2019re leaving a big piece of the pie on the table.’\u201d<\/p>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/pro\/amazons-artist-merch-operation-changes-game-fans\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/camp-flog-gnaw-amazon-music-billboard-1800.jpg?w=1024″] Trending on Billboard Before Doja Cat headlined her first arena tour in late 2023, Amazon\u2019s merch team approached her managers with a proposition. \u201cWhat if fans could buy T-shirts and hoodies without waiting in line at merch counters?\u201d they asked. \u201cWhat if Amazon shipped those T-shirts and hoodies to their homes, so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,226],"class_list":["post-1892467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-billboard-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1892467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1892467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1892467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1892467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1892467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1892467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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