2019 BEST OF ARTIST MERCH

Fashion

Jan 1

Well, Well, Well. We are back. The end of a decade and 2019 has arrived with a lot of loss and a lot of confusion. What a great year for women in Hip-Hop but if we are going to be honest, besides Tekashi69’s trolling/arrest, Drake getting boo’d off stage at Camp Flog and a bunch of other mindless instagram content, 2019 can be wrapped up in a few phrases.

A lot of music. A lot of accompanied merchandise bundles for single sale boost. 4 or 5 officially promoted tours. R.I.P Nipsey Hussle. R.I.P. Juice WRLD.

Oh and let us not forget, this is the year that Kanye has found Jesus.

In my opinion, merch isn’t the same when you can cop it at Hot Topic. It’s extremely accessible and most artist doing bigger arena tours sell their t-shirts and hats in the parking lot of the venue or sell directly to Urban Outfitters, Forever21 or Hot Topic. You really don’t have to go to shows anymore to add your favorite artist t-shirts to your collection.

…but that breakdown isn’t what you came for. We are here to talk “concert” merchandise. Due to last years, bundling fiasco with Travis Scott, Billboard has officially started counting bundles as sales. It has just been announced that in 2020, Youtube views will be counted as streams also. So not only will I have to look at single bundling merchandise but music video merch in the years to come. Wait on it.

Blankets will be excluded from the ranking this year. Sorry Shawn Mendez, Halsey and Rico Nasty.

For there to be so much merchandise put out this year, the lack of creativity was and is endless. Artist make most of their money touring and from merchandise purchases. I thought more effort would be put into the things that get bought the most. If you aren’t selling out shows and moving units like you want, your merchandise should be out of this world. If you love that body of work that you shared with the world, you should love that shirt you are selling to your fans. If you have the budget to make beautiful music videos, your concert tees should not look like they were made using Kid Pix Deluxe 3.

Also, If your project is trash, your merch should be fire. Especially if you are going to bundle it to get on Billboard 200.

Now here’s the drops and cops that you should have in your collection going into the new year.

P.S.- I predicted the the decline in creativity and quality in merch last year. Here’s a link for reference.

Please stop using cars themes as merch. We are bored.