From ‘Throwing Fits’ to ‘Crime Junkie’, Podcast Merch has become big business

The podcast product business, in particular, is growing, as more listeners want to show their loyalty to the podcast of their choice through a t-shirt, mug or sweatshirt. Marisa Morales, head of merchandising at Stitcher, a podcast conglomerate, said sales of merchandise associated with Stitcher’s programs like “WTF with Marc Maron”, “Sklarbro Country” and “Freakonomics Radio” are practically doubling each year. She compared the excitement around, say, a newly released mug from “The Office Ladies,” a podcast about the past TV series, to the frantic hype surrounding the launch of Air Jordan sneakers. Hundreds of cups of coffee can run out in hours.

This fervent commodity market is unparalleled in the traditional media. Newspapers and periodicals still sweeten the subscription offerings with free gifts – many of us have New Yorker bags languishing in our closets, or we have that “ESPN the Magazine” jacket that was widely advertised on late night TV. But podcast merchandise operates as a stand-alone phenomenon that sees listeners spending $ 30 just for a T-shirt or $ 60 for a sweatshirt. As Morales said, the merchandise attracts because it makes the listener’s connection to a podcast tangible.

In this sense, the closest cousin to podcast products are the band’s t-shirts. Dita Cordelia, 24, a freelance video producer and dedicated podcast listener in Los Angeles, compared her Scriptnotes shirt – denoting her devotion to a weekly script podcast – to the Morrissey shirt she wore at school. In both cases, she said, the shirts send an internal message (some would say hipster) “Oh, you don’t know about it … you have to hear it”.

And like concert t-shirts, podcast equipment allows listeners to return to their favorite sources of entertainment. “It’s supporting something I’m interested in,” said Corey Long, 40, a contract coordinator at a university in Atlanta, who recently bought a shirt from the novice podcast “How Long Gone,” hosted by two older brothers from the millennium. (In the case of larger programs with gigantic audiences, it is sales of advertisements, not merchandise, that normally keep the microphones on.) Long admits that, unlike buying concert t-shirts surrounded by a swarm of other fans, buying products from podcast is not a “shared experience”. You are at home alone, listening in isolation.

This privacy bubble is central to a podcast’s appeal. Cordelia, from Los Angeles, said last year she started listening to podcasts instead of the radio to keep her cool while on the move. Podcasts, she said, “it was like listening to friends having an easy conversation compared to Ryan Seacrest telling me at eight in the morning to listen to this rap song.” This intimacy offers an escapism that some listeners particularly enjoyed during the frantic past year. Notably, this past holiday season, Ms. Cordelia and her friends bought each other’s podcast t-shirts instead of band t-shirts as in the past – reflecting the change in their listening habits.

When it comes to the design printed on a podcast shirt, “the more inside the joke, the better,” said Morales of Stitcher, whose product website Podswag.com allows you to buy 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 t-shirt that Mr. Long bought from “How Long Gone” riffs on the cover design of an obscure punk album. The painful niche reference of the shirt helped him identify with the program’s presenters: “The podcast is about two aged hardcore punk guys. I’m also an old hardcore punk guy. ”So far, none of his friends have noticed the shirt reference.

Promoting a community through merchandise is certainly one of the objectives of the program. “We want to build the ‘How Long Gone’ universe,” said co-host Chris Black. After launching some reference t-shirts and bags, he and his fellow host Jason Stewart are partnering with Tinker, an Indianapolis-based coffee maker. to launch a cold canned coffee called “Mudd”, the term Mr. Black uses when discussing coffee on the show.

This caffeinated plan summarizes how podcasts are turning into full-fledged lifestyle brands. “The Office Ladies” sells blankets, backpacks, frisbees and an appropriate stapler (see “The Office”). “The Last Podcast on the Left,” a comedy police show, launched a sold-out cruiser bike with New York’s Priority Bikes. And “This Podcast Will Kill You”, whose main theme is diseases and epidemiological issues, sold its own exclusive soap.

Not all podcast product customers take the tie-in at first. Unaware that he was connected to a program, Dan Christansen, 38, who works in marketing in Philadelphia, recently fell in love with a bag he had seen on the Instagram of the New York basketball podcast “Cookies Hoops”. (An ironic parody of the classic New York bag, the $ 35 bag shows Eustace Tilley spinning a basketball.) After browsing the program’s website, Christansen bought a shirt, with NBA players Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid caricatures like Beavis & Butthead and the phrase “Practicing sucks” on the front. Although the shirt refers to the topics covered in the program, Mr. Christansen sees it as a “standalone piece” rather than an “emblem” indicating that he listens to the podcast.

Certain podcasts are even pushing their products into the realm of luxury. In recent months, “Throwing Fits”, a fashion podcast worshiped at the age of one, has partnered with Italian shoe brand Diemme in $ 300 olive green suede Chelsea boots and American shoe brand Blackstock & Weber in $ 295 countertop moccasins. Each of the shoe designs sold “hundreds of pairs,” said co-host James Harris.

Alex Green, a 21-year-old college student from Amherst, Massachusetts, was among those who bought Chelsea boots. Given his budget, shoes were an investment, but he trusted the two hosts. “They are great opinion makers … These are the guys I look for to get fashion advice,” he said. “And there are not many people I turn to for fashion advice.”

For the hosts, choosing a tangible and sophisticated product to sell certainly required more effort than just barking a few hot bids. Co-presenters wanted listeners to “be satisfied with what they spent their hard-earned money on,” said Lawrence Schlossman, Harris’s partner in crime. They considered different samples and tested the boots and loafers for months before releasing them. This process changed “Throwing Fits” from a mere merchandising operation to something close to a private label clothing store. Said Mr Schlossman: “When we are in vacant mode or in boot mode, it is as if I no longer feel like a pod. I feel like we’re a brand. “

Write to Jacob Gallagher at [email protected]