How To Purchase An Official Licence To Sell Music Related Products?

[mikeoooze]

Does anyone know how you would go about obtaining an official licence to print music related T Shirts, with such band logos as Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Whitesnake etc etc. Thanks.

[Andrew]

Costs are substantial. Do you have a bugdet in mind and are you flexible on the bands? Unless you have a network of outlets ready to supply for wholesale or a large d2c route then you really need to think about lesser options.

[mikeoooze]

Andrew, I don't have a budget in mind as yet as I haven't got a clue of the costs involved or how to go about it. There are only about half a dozen bands I am interested in. Do you have any info on how and where to apply? Thanks.

[Justin]

I hope you have deep pockets!

[Andrew]

I don't know if the larger companies would consider just a select few. If you are cherry picking bands then there might be an individual route for each one. Is it not viable to go down the wholesale route first of all to test the market for what you want to achieve?

It is a cut throat market between the companies that print the band merch. Many will have the same licences and customer base so price is key which in turn means volume is required. Not an easy game and the company currently dominating, imports there goods largely rather than UK sourced (on mugs anyway).

Cheaper alternative ways of this are more of the retro route on bands that are not really prominent anymore but had a large following 10/20/30 years ago etc.

[Paul]

Socialgiraffe is printing official merchandise for some bands so he may pop in and shade some light on this for you.

[socialgiraffe]

In a word... Forget it

More so now than ever before as merchandise is where the money is. There is no way any label would release rights to garments when they can get a t-shirt printed and bagged for £1.98 and sell it themselves.

The web shop investment alone would be in the region of £7-10k
Plus, you would need fulfillment offices on three continents (Oz, US and Europe)
And a track record in this field

Some of the pop acts such as One D, do release rights to certain items, but it has to be something different, clothing would never get through (I know of at least three International retailers that got knocked back). Also bear in mind that you can not use your own images. All images have to be official ones released by the bands management.

Andrew is right in that you would be better going for those that are still knocking around from 20 years ago. Sort of bands that have probably gone through three or four band members per musician, had one or two decent hits back in the eighties and are now gigging in large pubs.

If the above hasn't put your off I will write more LOL!!!

[mikeoooze]

Thanks Socialgiraffe. I was hoping to sell my own designs rather then their merchandise but with their permission, but from what you say, that doesn't sound possible. :frown:

[mikeoooze]

This is one design I had in mind. I checked to see if the logo in the middle was trademarked, but surprisingly it doesn't seem to be.

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Who-Autographed-T-Shirt-08.jpg (50.09 KiB) Viewed 14 times

[Andrew]

It would be copyrighted or covered through whatever avenue they require. The companies that have the rights to these larger bands have no interest in the small punters. They have no need to punt around licences when the large distributors provide them with the network they need. If someone put forward a case to provide additional revenue and had funds to back it up they would listen. They are used the same companies so a new player would raise a few questions so would not be easy to find a way in.