Artists on Spotify can now sell merch with Shopify partnership

Spotify has announced its partnership with e-commerce platform Shopify, allowing artists to link their Shopify stores directly to their Spotify profiles and sell merchandise to fans.

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Artists and their teams can list merch on Spotify once they have set up a Shopify store and connected it to their Spotify for Artists accounts. Once the accounts are linked, artists can “easily” manage inventory, orders, and everything about their store from their Shopify admin. For example, out-of-stock items will be automatically removed from profiles.

In a statement announcing the collaboration, Spotify said: “the Spotify for Artists team is focused on developing new tools and resources to help artists turn listeners into fans, fans into superfans, and, ultimately, earn more — not just through music, but also merch, ticketing, tipping, Fans First emails, and more”.

This new integration is supposedly part of ongoing efforts to help forge stronger fan-artist relations and give artists more opportunities to grow their revenue streams.

To begin, artists have to log in to their Spotify for Artists dashboard on desktop, go to the “Profile” tab, and click “Merch”. From there, they can choose three items from their store to feature on their artist profile. For now, each artist can only link to one Shopify store per artist profile. And to promote the feature, Shopify is currently offering a 90-day free trial to all Spotify artists signing up for the first time.

This feature is currently in beta mode and although any artist globally can link their Shopify store, Shopify merch will only be visible to listeners in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US.

Merchandising expert and founder of ICON Printing, Alex Econs, shares his thoughts on the recent expansion into merch commerce: “This is a great move for making merchandise more accessible and, as seen with Netflix’s recent launch of its own online store, we’re seeing the continued trend of big media companies moving into the merchandise market.

“Merch is just another way for artists to be creative and to connect with their fans. By reducing the friction between fans interacting with an artist’s music and purchasing their merchandise is a surefire way for individuals to expand their brands through commerce.”

Learn more at artists.spotify.com.