Spotify has debuted a dedicated merch hub ahead of Wrapped 2023. Photo Credit: Spotify
Weeks after rolling out a “brand new tab design” on artist profiles – purportedly boosting merchandise sales in the process – Spotify has debuted a dedicated in-app “merch hub.”
Stockholm-headquartered Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) just recently announced the standalone merch hub via a brief release. Shopify (NYSE: SHOP), having partnered with Spotify two years ago to bring physical products to artist profiles, is also powering this latest feature. (July of 2022 then saw YouTube and Shopify finalize an integration deal of their own.)
And according to Spotify, said feature “makes it easier than ever to access all artist merch in one place,” enabling fans to avoid “having to browse artist by artist” for items. Though merch is still available through individual profiles, of course, the service’s newly developed hub had at the time of this writing grouped together a number of physical items from commercially prominent acts like Taylor Swift and Metro Boomin.
Expanding upon the latter point, Spotify has indicated that the merch hub provides “personalized merch recommendations based on your listening habits.” Once again at the time of this writing, it didn’t appear that users could search for products through the hub like they would a traditional webstore.
Especially as Spotify continues to monetize promotion in an effort to achieve profitability, it’ll be worth closely monitoring the “personalized merch recommendations” as well as third parties’ potential ability to influence them for a fee.
In any event, the audiobook-equipped service has also gone ahead and established a merch hub tile on its browse page. Additionally, ahead of Wrapped 2023, Spotify took the opportunity to reiterate that the annual listenership-data campaign had in 2022 fueled “the highest-grossing merch sales week for artists in Spotify history.”
Regarding the initially mentioned new tab design’s claimed contribution to merch sales, the platform communicated that it had observed when testing the retooled layout “a 22% increase in users purchasing a merch item when visiting the merch tab on an artist’s profile.”
Meanwhile, Spotify isn’t the only streaming service working to enhance its merchandise offerings. About two months ago, Amazon Music launched integrated merch for approximately 600,000 artists as part of a Bandsintown collaboration. The development arrived amid continued Amazon Music investments in live performances including festivals and exclusive gigs.
Today, for instance, Amazon announced that it had tapped Green Day to play “a career-spanning set” for Amazon Music Live on October 26th, with Latto slated to close out the season (installments of which follow Thursday Night Football games that air on Amazon) on November 2nd.
