Rocking T-Shirts for Guns N' Roses

Monday 24th of November 2008 05:02:51 AM

Rocking T-Shirts for Guns N' Roses

The music industry has had to adapt to changing distribution systems as giant retailers like Best Buy, Target and Wal-Mart enter the scene. Once considered to be the shopping havens for traditional middle class consumers, the stores began selling first issues of popular, and sometimes hard core, rock bands. This has attracted a whole different kind of store consumer looking for the latest music CDs by favourite artists such as Guns N’ Roses and the Eagles.

The addition of the rock CDs to the music selection for sale has also led to additional sales of other related items such as t-shirts and caps. For example, in October, Wal-Mart became the sole outlet for the sale of the AC/DC “Black Ice” CD. Also sold were AC/DC t-shirts and many other branded items in what are called mini-stores.

Guns N’ Roses is the most recent rock band to turn to general merchandise stores for CD distribution. The band’s most recent release, “Chinese Democracy”, will be sold exclusively in Best Buy stores. A Best Buy manager, Gary Arnold, said, “It’s a logical step, given the challenges of breaking out from all the noise that exists in the marketplace. As technology and entertainment products proliferate, I think artists are trying to look for ways they can be as successful as possible.”

The deals that rock bands are making for the sale of music and branded merchandise is in response to a number of factors including online piracy which is reducing sales. The retail chains profit from these deals in a couple of ways. Of course the store makes money on the sale of the CDs, but they also profit just by getting the customer into the store. Many times the person looking for the branded t-shirts ends up buying additional items not related to the band.

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