Music merch gets the tech treatment. What can fashion learn?

This article is part of our Vogue Business membership package. To enjoy unlimited access to our weekly Technology Edit, which contains Member-only reporting and analysis and our NFT Tracker, sign up for membership here. Look for them at Beyonce’s Renaissance tour, Taylor Swift’s Eras tour or The Weeknd’s After Hours Til Dawn tour: hundreds of pieces of merchandise, from tees to hoodies, available at each stadium stop. Merch is a major moneymaker for musicians. Now, performing artists are boosting the value of merch by integrating blockchain-based loyalty mechanisms into the clothes on offer at their shows — and the tickets they sell ahead of time. The Weeknd’s tour has an associated NFT collection, and American band Avenged Sevenfold will NFC-chip over 170,000 pieces of merch for its current tour. At Harry Styles’s Ireland show, 5,000 fans who signed up with the Evnts app received Web3 wallets that grant access to rewards for buying tickets, engaging with social content and buying merchandise, in partnership with Web3 platform Co:Create. It’s a lesson in extending a product’s lifecycle beyond purchase. Can fashion brands — which work with many of these artists as brand ambassadors — tap into this opportunity, and learn from music’s embrace of Web3 to further reap the benefits of these fandoms and celebrity endorsers? Music and fashion have long borrowed from one another, says Nick Adler, who straddles both worlds as co-founder of Web3-native fashion brand Mntge and Snoop Dogg’s brand partnerships manager. Adler cites live music’s influence on fashion as of late: Celine’s Autumn/Winter 2023 show morphed into a rock concert led by Iggy Pop; Chanel’s Cruise 2023 show was as much an event as it was a show, featuring a Snoop Dogg performance as attendees roller-skated. The same goes for the digital realm. Before Balenciaga and Ralph Lauren ventured onto Fortnite (in 2021 and 2022, respectively), Travis Scott performed there virtually in 2020, replete with in-game skins themed to Scott and physical Cactus Jack x Fortnite merch (Cactus Jack is Scott’s record label). For both industries, there’s money to be made, be it digital augmentations to physical products, or digital products themselves. It’s this core understanding that’s at the root of Warner Music Group’s (WMG) recent investment in DressX, says co-founder Daria Shapovalova. “We’re about to do so many projects together, so it made sense for us to connect on a strategic level,” she says. Musicians’ audiences are active in the digital realm — so creating and monetising digital merch is a logical next step, Shapovalova says. Music and fashion have delved into this new technology with different approaches. Whereas fashion was (and, often still, is) heavily focused on fidelity and the look of a drop, those on the music side prioritise how people will engage with the tech, says DressX co-founder Natalia Modenova. That said, she flags, both industries are keen on exploring the tech as a new creative tool — and while they can learn from one another in their approaches, one isn’t a blueprint for the other. Like the critics of fashion’s NFT projects, not everyone in the music realm is on board. “Some loathed the idea of NFTs and some took the jump,” says Avenged Sevenfold lead singer Matt Shadows, who led the band’s NFC-chipped merch initiative. “We have not heard one complaint from the folks that dived in.” There are lessons to be learned from music’s increasingly-strategic embrace of new technologies, from Web3 to digital fashion. It’s less about Web2 versus Web3 technology, and more about how artists can monetise and engage their communities, DressX’s Shapovalova says — which, oftentimes, blockchain technology can help with. And fashion ought to watch. The promise of proximity An artist’s presence has a powerful pull. Fashion knows this well; it’s why luxury brands tap celebrity ambassadors. Cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which partnered with The Weeknd on his tour’s NFT collection, also recognises the value of celebrity. “Abel [Tesfaye, aka The Weeknd] and his team had a huge passion for what he could do to optimise and improve both the super-fan and the general-fan experience,” says Rachel Conlan, VP of global marketing at Binance. “They were really keen to understand how they could bring us in and introduce fans to this idea of Web3 and make it more accessible.” The teams played on the idea of concert ticket stubs as souvenirs to create the Souvenir NFT that ticket holders can claim. Some give access to ticket upgrades, others to autographed merch, Conlan says. “We’ve had 15,000 souvenir NFTS claimed across 14 markets, which is a much higher adoption than what I would have expected.” There’s an element of fomo, she explains: “It plays into the psyche of not wanting to miss out.” Particularly when missing out means losing access to a favourite artist. Avenged Sevenfold’s NFC-chipped merch plays on a similar idea, betting that fans will be keen to stay in the artist’s loop. “The merchandise becomes a means of connection for much longer than a show or a stream,” Shadows says. “We can run contests, provide content and interact with the chips for up to 500 washes.” Plus, it keeps fans engaged: the more they participate, the better the benefits and earlier the access to future tickets. DressX’s digital merch doesn’t look like your average merch; instead, many of the items are pieces the artists themselves might wear. Its first Warner drop, with Argentenian musician Tiago PZK, included three accessories and the outfit worn by Tiago in his “Asqueroso” music video, which gave fans the opportunity to dress like their favourite artist. Its NFT drop with electronic artist Agoria was twofold: a T-shirt that any fan can access, and a hat that whitelisted holders can mint for free and use for access to future drops. It enables artists to sell more (digital) garments, and encourage more sustained fan engagement via the AR filters tied to all of the garments. Chipping and minting are only first steps, Mntge’s Adler says. “You can use the technology to gather people together around a common cause,” he says. “But, once you do that, you have a whole new list of things you need to be diligent about.” People expect the perks — and access — they’re promised. Plus, based on his experience with Mntge, it can take six months to a year to know who from that initial community is there to stay. Those who are prove to be lucrative to artists and brands alike. Going forward, Adler sees music as Mntge’s biggest growth opportunity. “We use music as our inspiration,” Adler says. “I saw an opportunity in music merchandising,” he says on Mntge’s inception. Tech presented the perfect way to connect audiences to artists beyond the merch purchase. “We’re looking at all these digital tools — Web3 has just been the strongest one to do that.” Value in overlap On top of learning from music’s engagement- and community-focused tech strategies, fashion might lean into the back-and-forth that already exists between the two worlds. “Where music’s been amazing at live events and community-building, that’s going to be a huge takeaway for how fashion can use Web3 as it creates more large events and bigger [ventures],” Adler says. “What are the merchandising items at these events? Are they [NFC-]chipped? Were you brought together as a member of a specific group that was issued an NFT to get in?” Prada Crypted holders, for instance, already get access to cultural (and music-centred) events such as Prada Extends and Prada Mode. Now, Mntge is acting on its founding vision. Over the weekend, the brand sold 50 limited-edition NFC-chipped jackets at a VIP booth at music festival Outside Lands in San Francisco. Created in collaboration with designer Ken Fulk, the vintage 1960s to 1990s Levi’s jackets serve as ‘typical’ festival merch while creating longer-term ties between holders and the event, opening up opportunities for future collaboration between the brand and musicians — with a ready-made audience. A Web3-native brand, Mntge is primed to execute these types of collaborations. However, what’s to stop ‘traditional’ luxury players from collaborating on exclusive, tech-augmented merch and collections down the line? Music players are already embedded in the industry, from Dua Lipa co-designing a Versace collection to Pharrell Williams’s Louis Vuitton Men’s creative director appointment. (He’s also creative director of Web3 media company Doodles — a sign of what’s to come at Vuitton?) “There's so much synergy between music and fashion, with artists being the face of luxury brands and then luxury brands embracing the artist for events. I think a major tool to bridge that will be the technology we’re talking about now,” Mntge’s Adler says. However, it’s still early days, DressX’s Modenova says. While there’s interest in digital fashion and Web3 from both the fashion and music industries, both are still working to integrate the tech into their long-term strategies. Until this is the case, “too many stars need to be [aligned] for this to happen”, she says. For now, musicians (like brands) are proving out the use case. “The benefits outweigh any that I have seen in my career as a musician,” Avenged Sevenfold’s Shadows says. “Something as simple as an immutable database, coupled with some creative ideas, has given artist communities new life.” And it’s one fashion can tap into. To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

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