the band t-shirt theory
why the next great music app will feel more like merch than money
I’ve spent more money on band t-shirts than rent checks.
My closet’s a 100% cotton playlist – Silverchair, Soundgarden, Daft Punk, Coachella 10x, Nirvana hand-me-downs from my guitar-slinging older brother. He taught me that fandom wasn’t just CDs, it was an outfit. An identity. A badge you wore into the world.
The merch stand knows me by name now. Every show, I cop something – a tee, a hoodie, a vinyl I may or may not spin. Paying for art has always felt tax-deductible, a girl-math quirk that lets me vote with my dollars for the things I want more of (mostly sad rap and metal).
That’s the point: fandom isn’t rational. It’s not an Excel model; it’s merch. And you can learn more about building a music product in the merch line than in any pitch deck. Fandom isn’t a spreadsheet. It’s a feeling – one a band t-shirt captures better than any blockchain ever will.
Everything you need to know about building music products, you can learn from band t-shirts.
Don’t listen to me because I build products. Listen because I wear a lot of band t-shirts. Steve Jobs had black turtlenecks. I have Black Sabbath. Same uniform, different religion.
But I don’t wear them for nostalgia. Or resale. Or clout.
I wear them for three simple, emotional, slightly irrational reasons – each one a lesson for anyone building in music.
Lesson 1: Fans Buy to Support
David Bowie once sold $55 million in “Bowie Bonds” backed by his future royalties – debt with better branding.
The idea of music as investment lingered decades later: NFTs, creator coins, royalty splits, tokenized revenue streams – all promising ownership, all drowning in metadata messes, SEC headaches, and underwhelming returns.
The reality: fans don’t want to own your cash flow; they want to keep you on the road, in the studio, making more music. That $40 oversized Gildan screenprint? Gas money to the next city. That’s survival – and it does more than a year’s worth of streaming ever will.
A crypto-coin paying me one-thousandth of a penny in royalties? That’s not ownership; that’s cosplay.
Lesson 2: Fans Buy to Remember
Sure, Online Ceramics sells Dead & Co. tees online. But my ears aren’t ringing on Shopify. The sweat’s dried. The nitrous doesn’t ship from Shakedown Street.
Crypto tried to bottle that feeling with POAPs and on-chain tickets, but digital provenance is a receipt, not a relic. Merch carries texture, memory, and tinnitus across your chest. It shows others what James once said we’re all really saying:
“I was there in the Paradise Garage DJ booth with Larry Levan.
I was there in Jamaica during the great sound clashes.
I woke up naked on the beach in Ibiza in 1988.”
Now being “there” is about taste, community, and memory. 1000 true fans aren’t betting the token goes up. They’re betting the memory is worth the spend.
And merch is the proof you can’t “mint.” Cotton > code. Being there > being early.
Always.
Lesson 3: Fans Buy to Express Themselves
Streaming platforms know this. That’s why Spotify Wrapped hit so hard: it wasn’t data, it was a mirror. A mirror that made you feel seen. A digital band tee. “Here’s who I am.”
MySpace Top 8s. Tumblr music blogs. Last.fm scrobbles. Same impulse: flex your taste. Broadcast your identity.
On one end: playing an instrument. On the other: wearing the shirt. In between: playlists, aux battles, DJ sets - all ways of saying, this is me.
(And nowhere on that spectrum sits a Bowie Bond).
The next great music product won’t feel like a brokerage app – it’ll feel like a merch table.
The future of music won’t look like an early-stage investment strategy. Or streaming royalties. Or minting NFTs. It’s not an asset class. It’s a crush. A timestamp. A beautifully irrational act.
The future of music will be built by people who get it. People who know what it means to wait in a merch line. To save up. Show up. And buy the shirt.
Not a token. Not a bond.
A band t-shirt.
/m
Images courtesy of Máuhan, Forbes, NYSMusic, Dead.Online (in order of appearance)
Bunch of startups: JKBX, Royalty Exchange, Royal.io, Sound.xyz, SongVest, et al.
drop the merch haul
"Not a token. Not a bond. A band t-shirt." reminds me of Bobby Hundred's book "This Is Not a T-Shirt" and love the parallel