From ‘throw fit’ to ‘crime junkie’, the Merch podcast has grown into a big business

The podcast business in particular is booming as more listeners want to show their allegiance to their podcast of choice through a t-shirt, mug, or hoodie. Marisa Morales, head of merchandising at Stitcher, a podcast conglomerate, said sales of merchandise associated with Stitcher shows such as “WTF with Marc Maron”, “Sklarbro Country” and “Freakonomics Radio” roughly doubled every year. . She compared the excitement surrounding, say, a newly launched mug of “The Office Ladies,” a podcast on the past sitcom, to the frenzied hype surrounding the release of the Air Jordan sneakers. Hundreds of coffee cups can sell out in a matter of hours.

This fervent commodity market has no equivalent in mainstream media. Newspapers and periodicals are still sweetening subscription deals with freebies – many of us have New York tote bags that languish in our closets, or have that “ESPN the Magazine” fleece that made the news. heavily advertised on television for years. But podcast merchandise works as a stand-alone phenomenon that sees listeners dropping $ 30 just for a t-shirt or $ 60 for a hoodie. As Ms. Morales said, merch appeals because it makes a listener’s connection to a podcast tangible.

In this sense, the closest cousin to podcast merchandising is the Band T-shirt. Dita Cordelia, 24, a freelance video producer and podcast listener in Los Angeles, compared her Scriptnotes shirt – denoting her devotion to a weekly podcast on screenwriting – to the Morrissey T-shirt she wore in high school. Either way, she said, the shirts send an insider message (some would say hipster) “Oh, you don’t know about that… you have to listen to this.

And like concert t-shirts, podcast equipment allows listeners to save their favorite sources of entertainment. “I support something I’m in,” said Corey Long, 40, a contract coordinator at an Atlanta college, who recently purchased a shirt from the “How Long Gone” podcast, hosted by two former Millennial Brothers . (In the case of larger shows with gigantic audiences, it’s the sales of commercials, not merchandise, that usually keep the mics going.) Mr. Long admits that, unlike buying concert shirts surrounded by ‘a swarm of other fans, buying podcast products is not This is not a’ shared experience ‘. You are alone at home, listening in isolation.

This privacy bubble, however, is at the heart of a podcast’s appeal. Ms Cordelia from Los Angeles said that last year she started listening to podcasts instead of the radio to keep calm while on the go. Podcasts, she said, “felt like listening to friends chatting easily compared to Ryan Seacrest telling me at eight in the morning to listen to that rap song.” This intimacy offers an escape that some listeners have particularly relished during this last hectic year. Tellingly, over the last holiday season, Ms Cordelia and her friends have been shopping for podcast shirts, rather than group shirts as in the past, reflecting their changing listening habits.

As for the design printed on a podcast shirt, “the more the joke is on the inside, the better,” said Ms. Morales of Stitcher, whose sales site Podswag.com allows you to purchase. t-shirts that say “Cheese Side Down” “or” Don’t be ironic “. Only listeners who download “The Sporkful” or “The Murder Squad” respectively will really laugh at these shirts.

The tee shirt Mr. Long bought riffs from “How Long Gone” on an obscure punk album cover. The shirt’s painful niche reference helped him identify with the show’s hosts: “The podcast is written by two aging hardcore punk dudes. And I’m also an aging hardcore punk dude. So far, none of his friends have retained the reference of the jersey.

Fostering community through merch is certainly one of the show’s goals. “We want to build the ‘How Long Gone’ universe,” said co-host Chris Black. After releasing a few reference T-shirts and bags, he and fellow host Jason Stewart team up with Indianapolis-based coffee maker Tinker. to launch a canned cold brew coffee called “Mudd,” the term Mr. Black uses when talking about coffee on the show.

This caffeinated plan epitomizes how podcasts turn into full-fledged lifestyle brands. “The Office Ladies” sells blankets, backpacks, frisbees, and a suitable stapler (get it, “The Office”). “The Last Podcast on the Left,” a comedy crime show, pulled out a now-depleted cruise bike with New York’s Priority Bikes. And “This Podcast Will Kill You,” which focuses on disease and epidemiological issues, has sold its own soap.

Not all podcast sales customers even get the link early. Unaware that he was linked to a show, Dan Christansen, 38, who works in marketing in Philadelphia, was recently wowed by a tote bag he saw on Instagram from the basketball podcast ” Cookies Hoops ”based in New York. (A tongue-in-cheek parody of the classic New Yorker tote, the $ 35 bag shows Eustace Tilley spinning a basketball.) After working on the show’s website, Mr. Christansen bought a shirt, with the NBA players Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid caricatured like Beavis & Butthead and the phrase “Practice Sucks” on the front. Although the T-shirt refers to the topics covered on the show, Mr. Christansen sees it as a “stand-alone piece” rather than a “badge” indicating that he is listening to the podcast.

Some podcasts even push their products into the luxury arena. Over the past several months, “Throwing Fits,” a year-old cult fashion podcast, has teamed up with Italian shoe brand Diemme on co-branded olive green suede Chelsea boots at $ 300 and the brand. of American Blackstock & Weber shoes on bench moccasins at $ 295. Each of the shoe models has sold “hundreds of pairs,” co-host James Harris said.

Alex Green, a 21-year-old student in Amherst, Massachusetts, was among those who purchased the Chelsea boots. Considering his budget, the shoes were an investment, but he trusted both hosts. “They’re great taste designers… they’re guys I turn to for fashion advice,” he said. “And I don’t turn to a lot of people for fashion advice.”

For the hosts, choosing a tangible, high-end product to sell surely required more effort than just barking hot plugs. The co-hosts wanted listeners “to be happy with what they spent their hard-earned money on,” said Lawrence Schlossman, Mr. Harris’ criminal partner. They looked at different samples and tested the boots and moccasins for months to wear before releasing them. This process transformed “Throwing Fits” from a simple sales transaction to something akin to a private label clothier. Mr. Schlossman said, “When we’re in loafer mode or boot mode, it’s like I don’t feel like a pod anymore. I feel like we are a brand. “

Write to Jacob Gallagher at [email protected]