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Strategy

YouTube Debuts ‘Merch Shelf’ for Music Artists

The shelf appears just below videos and, with one click, lets fans purchase branded gear from official artists.

YouTube has a new offering that allows musical artists with an official artist channel to sell their branded merchandise from a “merch shelf” that appears below videos.

Launched this week, the novel swag-focused ecommerce service is the result of a collaboration between YouTube and Merchbar, which carries more than 1 million branded items from 35,000 artists, making the site one of the largest global music merchandise aggregators.

“Merchandise drops have become an integral part of artists’ album campaigns,” YouTube said in a statement. “With this partnership, YouTube is giving fans direct access to their most favorite merch. Fans watching videos from their favorite artists on their YouTube Official Artist Channels can now see a shelf with the artist’s own branded merchandise and, with a simple click, access the artist’s merchandise on Merchbar’s website.”

Music producer/DJ Marshmello debuted a soccer jersey on his Merchbar/YouTube merch shelf.

As part of the launch, popular electronic music DJ and producer Marshmello debuted an all-new soccer jersey that’s exclusive to Merchbar and his YouTube channel, which has nearly 40 million subscribers.

Marshmello soccer jersey.

If the YouTube merch shelf sounds a bit familiar, that’s because the video-sharing platform previously established a merch shelf offering for non-music creators who have more than 10,000 followers. That was done in partnership with Teespring.

From a promotional products perspective, merch shelf offerings like this could represent a potential source of competition. On the other hand, the move also speaks to the important emphasis musical artists are placing on merchandise sales, which translates into opportunity for savvy promo pros. Other recent creative music merchandise initiatives include U.K.-based rockers Bring Me the Horizon selling fans a personalized T-shirt based on their Spotify streaming preferences.