As a music artist, you’ll usually find yourself on stage, standing out from the crowd, literally as well as figuratively. Standing out, that’s what you do. It’s what makes you special.
When it comes to your merch offering, the same applies. You wouldn’t want your merch to be like everyone else’s, right? Preferably, your merch reflects who you are as a unique artist. This means you should include unique types of merch when setting up your merch strategy.
Which 6 unique merch ideas are easy to try out right now?
To make sure your merch offering is seen as a gem in a sea of mediocrity, we listed 6 unique merch ideas you can start designing and selling today.
1. Cassettes
If you’re over the age of 40, surely you have fond memories of cassette tapes. Specifically rewinding them manually using nothing but a pencil. To be fair, the music quality on these things is still quite bad, and they’re also incredibly fragile.
Nonetheless, there has been a global resurgence in the popularity of cassette tapes since the pandemic, making them a pretty awesome and unique type of merch. Especially if you include some neo-retro branding and design. Nostalgia and unicity are the name of the game, here. Also, cheap to produce, but still a really unique physical object.
2. Limited Edition Vinyl
Like with the resurgence of retro cassette tapes, vinyl has been going through a similar rebound in popularity. One might also argue the use of vinyl never really left the music scene.
However, now that streaming has become such a dominant way for fans to consume music, spending money on a physical piece of your favourite songs or albums has acquired a new appeal. Play into this by releasing limited edition vinyl records as a unique type of music merch.
3. Custom Mugs
When imagining trendy and unique music merchandise items, you might not immediately think of drinkware. However, people – especially coffee or tea drinkers – use their mugs on a daily basis.
You get your artwork printed on a coffee mug, you bet you the people who buy it will be thinking about your music every morning. And if your artist brand is on the less serious side of the spectrum, you could consider choosing a more humorous, tongue-in-cheek artwork.
With a merch on demand platform like Fanbace, you can design custom drinkware merch and start selling it in literal minutes.
4. Pyjamas
Similar to coffee mugs, pyjamas aren’t the first thing you’d think of when imagining trendy music merch. But offering pyjamas as a merch type is definitely something that would make you stand out from the crowd.
Besides, who wouldn’t want their fans to go to sleep and wake up wearing their branded artist pyjamas. We’re sure the first thing they’d do in the morning is play your tunes, and have a cup of coffee from their custom artist mug.
5. Skateboards
Another uncommon but extremely unique merch idea for artists and bands: printing your artwork on a skateboard deck. Granted, not all artists have audiences prone to skateboarding, but if you do, your fans would die for some skateboard merch.
Upcoming British skate brand Lovenskate actually did a collaboration with Metallica. Safe to say it turned out great. If you get the chance to design something similar and stick your band logo on a skateboard deck, we advise you to do so. Bound to sell out in no time.
6. Phone Accessories
Whether you like it or not, if there’s one thing central to contemporary experience, it’s the mobile phone. Everyone has one, and uses it all the time. One way to stay top of mind is to attach your artist brand to something as ubiquitous as mobile phones.
Phone cases, ring holders, chargers, selfie sticks, headphones: any and all phone-related merch is going to keep you top of mind with your fans. Any time they whip out their phones is going to be a likely time they’ll want to put on your tunes.
More unique merch ideas? Get in touch and let us know.
Of course, the above is just a small selection of unique ways to sell merch as an artist. If there are any unique merch ideas we forgot to include, feel free to get in touch with us.
If you’re just starting out and would like to get started with your own merch campaigns straightaway, why don’t you give Fanbace a try? This merch on demand platform lets you turn engaged audiences into loyal customers.
The only thing you have to do is design the merch, while we take care of printing and shipping for you. No stock needed – you only pay for what you sell – so there’s no risk involved. Sell this merch on bandcamp, Shopify, or create a Merchlink and promote it on your socials.
