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Stories: Gen Con 2021 & Important Question (Patreon)

Published:
2021-09-20 17:28:19
Imported:
2026-09
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I'm home from Gen Con. I had an amazing time. Just like Dragon Con, I took a lot of extra downtime. It made for a fairly more relaxing experience. But not exactly as you'll hear in this edition of Stories from the Road.

Would you mind sharing some feedback below?

One of the challenges I faced over the last decade is the decline of CD sales. Right now, well over half of you probably still buy CDs. So thank you!  hehe. 

At some point my audience will be less inclined to BUY a CD. So I, and all musicians, need a new product. CD sales are the #1 reason I can afford to go to Gen Con and Dragon Con every year. People will buy them. That makes it financially worthwhile.

I had a brainstorming session with Andrew McKee and Katrina (his sales helper). We came up with a promising idea--the lapel pin.

I printed a new Celtic Cat lapel that I paid for with money I raised from the Selcouth Kickstarter. 

I don't know about you. But lapel pins are not exactly my thing at present. But could they be?

Imagine for a moment that you no longer had a CD player. You came to a show, enjoyed some of my music. You checked out the merch table. You see the CDs sitting there.

Next to them are lapel pins attached to a CD cover sized card that included track listing and a download code. But there's not just one. There's one FOR EACH ALBUM.

There's also a lanyard there. You can now buy the album, pin the lapel pin onto the lanyard, and WEAR your album on you.

So the next time you come up to my table and say, "Hmm. I don't remember which albums  I have", you can look down at your lanyard and see each album.

It becomes sort of a badge of honor... 

What album do you own?

Oh! You have that album. That's awesome. There are not many of those pins.

Etc etc.

And of course, you can download the album on Bandcamp. You can also get that card to which the pin was attached autographed, if you like for display at home.

And of course if you just prefer streaming on Amazon Music or Spotify, that's fine too. But now you can wear which are your favorite albums.

So that's the concept I'm tossing in my head. I'd love your thoughts and feedback.

What do you think?

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Comments

Joshua Ohmer

I like the idea! I have stopped buying CDs since Google Music shut down. It was where I stored my music collection, so I was forced to find an alternative, and Spotify seemed to be the best option. But I do collect pins, so that would be a nice alternative way to support an artist!

Troy Rodgers

I'm not the best one to answer your question, but I think you know that already. As a friend of mine put it, you likely won't sell k cups to people who grind their own coffee beans every morning, and vice versa. Even so, I'm seeing a lot more character "figpins" for sale online these days, so the idea clearly has the attention of manufacturers. Has this actually caught on? Will it last? No clue. But I can see an appeal to minimalist collectors (if that's not a contradiction in terms) who have very little room for their treasures and/or don't want a lot of stuff. Is it for me? Not really. I've already done a lifetime of collecting stuff. But I have a wall of CDs that I play on a regular basis and add to weekly. For the download and streaming audience? This pin idea might have legs.

Brian Morin

One option might be to sell flash drives on lanyards. Have a laptop at the merch table and someone transfer files of purchased music. Could brand the flash drives too. If you got other musicians on board at faires and such, a person could carry all their purchased music on one drive. They could also listen to it in their car on the way home. Not sure about feasibility, but something to think about.

filkferengi

I've seen several authors and musicians adding pins to their kickstarters. --filkferengi

Martin

Right now when I buy a CD I just pop it once in my laptop and rip it to my hard drive. I may not be able to buy laptops with CD drives for much longer, so the idea of selling the music in a different format makes sense, and is appealing... as long as there's a way to download the music as an mp3! I'm not super into pins, but I admit that your pitch makes it sound pretty interesting and intriguing

Charlie Thul

Right now pins are trendy, my daughter spent $100+ on pins at Gen Con (including one from you). So getting a code for a digital download along with a pin unique to each album is a good idea. I have no idea what the profitability is between pins and CD's and digital downloads, but hopefully you could price things to be appealing and profitable. Personally I purchase CDs, convert them to digital and listen to digital music exclusively. One suggestion would be to allow people to purchase custom CDs, i.e., they can pick 10 - 12 tracks of yours (or whatever fits on the CD) then you could send them a CD with the song mix they want. I know it's easy to burn music onto CD, I just don't know what the costs are with either printing something on the CD face or printing a custom insert.

William McKissack

I am old and have too many CDs to stop buying them. But as you pointed out eventually people will stop having ways to listen to CDs. Label pins are an interesting concept and some people will collect them. Assuming they cost about the same as a CD then it is worth the experiment. My experience with pins is that they are great until the pin mechanism no longer works and they fall out somewhere. Another option would be something like the ribbons for badges. With your each purchase you get a card with the info and a ribbon. Then you can attach the ribbon to a single card or your badge or whatever. Also the ribbon can have the album name and the artist. You have enough CDs that it will be difficult to make each lapel pin distinct. The ribbon is not as classy as a lapel pin but it might be better advertising.

William McKissack

Some days I am slow but the ribbons and pins are not either or. You can do both. The ribbons seemed to be a hit at DragonCon this year.

River Godbee

I am a huge fan of lapel pins and would love to see more people use them in creative ways such as this. It would be so cool to have to "catch 'em all" and complete a set of Marc Gunn music pins complete with lanyard. To be honest, I would personally even go as far as re-purchasing said CDs (MP3s?) in order to get the pin.