Guest Post By Ben Lord and Martina England, Softlimit.
On paper, the music industry has never looked healthier. Global revenues keep climbing, independent artists have more ways to be heard than ever, and vinyl is cooler than ever. But talk to anyone running a small label or touring on their own records, and you'll hear a different story: shrinking streaming checks, venues taking a bigger cut of the merch table, and shipping costs eating what's left.
The gap between those two realities isn't about demand. Fans are there, and they want to buy. The gap is infrastructure. Softlimit, a Shopify Premier Partner agency, has rebuilt the online stores of labels like Merge Records, Sacred Bones, Temporary Residence Ltd., and Polyvinyl, and its results show what happens when a music brand adopts a direct-to-consumer (DTC) mindset. They don't just survive. They scale.
Growth on paper, squeeze in practice
The headline numbers are strong. Global recorded music revenue grew 5.9% through the first part of 2025, its 11th straight year of growth, according to the IFPI. Independents are doing even better: non-major revenue grew 8.4% in 2024, outpacing the majors, and indies held a 46.7% ownership share in 2025. Streaming democratization, more diverse global audiences, and social discovery are all fueling that rise.
Physical isn't fading either. Vinyl sales rose 7% in 2024 and held steady in 2025, making up roughly 75% of physical music sales. In 2025, vinyl outsold CDs in the U.S. for the fifth year running.
Now look at what reaches the people making the records:
- Streaming pays fractions of a cent. Royalties average $0.003 to $0.005 per stream, so even successful independent acts earn a few dollars per thousand plays.
- Merch margins are shrinking. For many independent artists, merch is most of their touring income. But between venue cuts of 10% to 40%, taxes, and fees, an artist might keep only 43% of gross merch revenue.
- Shipping keeps climbing. Costs rose about 19% across 2023 to 2025, forcing artists to pass costs on to fans or eat the loss.
- The default platform is wobbling. Bandcamp, long the go-to for indie artists, has been through ownership changes and layoffs, making it a risky sole sales channel.
The industry is growing. The people fueling that growth mostly aren't, because the infrastructure and the mindset haven't caught up.
Labels already have what DTC brands pay millions for
Here's the part most labels underestimate. Independent labels sit on exactly what every DTC brand is chasing:
- A hyper-engaged audience. Fans who are loyal, emotionally invested, and eager to buy direct.
- An authentic brand voice rooted in story, culture, and taste.
- A constant stream of new product: albums, tours, merch, and artist narratives.
- Direct artist relationships and early access to exclusives.
Major DTC brands spend fortunes building demand, identity, and product. Labels already own all three. And their products are proprietary: albums, limited pressings, and exclusives that need no licensing and no revenue share.
That makes direct-to-consumer the one channel where a label sells straight from the source, with no distributor, retailer, or platform taking a cut. Most label revenue still flows through systems built to extract fees. DTC is the only place where the label controls the margin. So when DTC underperforms, it isn't just missed growth. It's profit left on the table.
The music business is already omnichannel: streaming, touring, social, merch, and retail. What's missing is a holistic, data-driven DTC model that ties it together. Fans are ready to buy. They need online experiences that are frictionless, feel like the music, and respect their loyalty.
of music merchants see loyalty members repeat-purchase at a higher rate than non-members.
of music merchants see loyalty members spend more per order than non-members.
Where it breaks down
Labels aren't thinking like DTC brands
Labels have incredible products and audiences, but often not the infrastructure or habits of a DTC operator. Thriving online means defining a brand voice that connects label, artist, and fan, and carrying it into a store that feels like the music. It means caring about conversion, not just aesthetics. It means lifting average order value (AOV) with bundles, upsells, and incentives. And it means designing mobile-first, because that's where most commerce happens now.
"I've seen dozens of label stores that look and function like pre-iPhone relics. They have loyal fans but give them a clunky checkout and no reason to buy direct." — Ben Lord, Founder, Softlimit
Handing the customer relationship to someone else
Many labels lean on third-party marketplaces, and those platforms keep the first-party data. That's a costly trade. Labels give up email and SMS opt-ins, the lifeblood of DTC. They lose behavioral data on past purchases, the ability to segment, retarget, and reward loyalty, and insight into regional demand.
These marketplaces can be SEO powerhouses, but it's their ecosystem and their customer. As of November 2025, fans had paid artists $1.61 billion through one third-party marketplace, alone. A meaningful share of that could flow directly to artists and labels instead of paying fees to reach their own audience.
Outdated or overcomplicated tech
Many labels still run on legacy platforms or aging custom builds. Others have basic, templated, poorly maintained Shopify setups. Even major artists leave money on the table by skipping conversion optimization, upsells, and modern UX.
Missed AOV and conversion basics
The proven ecommerce levers are often missing entirely: no bundles, cross-sells, or upsells; no free-shipping thresholds or cart incentives; no reviews or user-generated content, despite fans talking constantly on Reddit, Discord, and social. In DTC, those details are the difference between a 1.8% and a 3.5% conversion rate. That's the difference between surviving and scaling.
Proof: three labels, three distinct identities
"Direct to consumer sales, first via mail order and now through modern ecommerce, have been a keystone of our way to connect directly with fans and generate revenue with as few middle men as possible." — Matt Lunsford, President and Co-Founder, Polyvinyl Records
Physical sales were supposed to vanish. Instead, independent labels that embraced direct-to-fan ecommerce rewrote the rules. Softlimit has rebuilt storefronts for three of them on Shopify Plus, raising conversion and order value without sacrificing their creative identity.
Polyvinyl Record Co.: early wins with room to run
Polyvinyl, known for indie rock, limited vinyl pressings, and artist-centric releases, needed a foundation built for scale. Softlimit migrated the label from a custom CMS to Shopify Plus, translated its brand into a digital aesthetic, structured the catalog for rapid expansion, and built limited-edition vinyl management and a newsletter-centric strategy to activate an already loyal audience.
As optimization compounds, Polyvinyl is on a clear path to high-volume growth.
Sacred Bones Records: atmospheric identity, elite performance
Sacred Bones is home to John Carpenter soundtracks, Plantasia reissues, and an unmistakably dark aesthetic. Softlimit's work included a full Shopify theme and data optimization, catalog structure for soundtracks, reissues, and genre clusters, filtering by genre, format, and artist, and pre-order infrastructure built around long production cycles, all while preserving the label's visual identity.
Softlimit ranks it among the highest-engagement catalogs it has worked with: proof that niche collectors plus optimized UX equals exceptional performance.
Temporary Residence Ltd.: a legacy catalog turned sales engine
Temporary Residence is known for experimental, genre-pushing releases and meticulous packaging, with a catalog spanning nearly three decades. Softlimit rebuilt the entire catalog architecture for historical depth and discoverability, tailored limited-edition management to its collectors, designed a modern UI around its experimental artwork, and tuned performance for a large, complex product mix.
AOV, total sales, and conversions all climbed in 2025. The throughline across all three: when a label pairs a loyal, niche audience with the right ecommerce strategy, performance takes off.
A four-step playbook for labels
The good news: this is repeatable. Any label can follow the same path by modernizing its tech, owning its data, and adopting DTC best practices.
1. Get your house in order. Migrate to Shopify, or upgrade to a Shopify 2.0 theme or Shopify Plus. Simplify your tech stack and stop over-engineering. Update your theme for Shopify's taxonomy and SEO improvements, and connect a third-party marketplace to your own site through the Shopify app, so it feeds your store instead of replacing it.
2. Start acting like a brand. Build email and SMS flows for welcome, abandoned cart, and browse abandonment. Add bundles, cross-sells, upsells, and free-shipping thresholds. Reward superfans with loyalty and referral programs, and use dynamic buy buttons like Apple Pay, Shop Pay, and Google Pay to cut checkout friction.
3. Think global, act local. Use Shopify Markets Pro to sell internationally in local currencies. Optimize for mobile and accessibility, which also protects you from ADA lawsuits.
4. Learn from the leaders. Third-party marketplaces have nailed SEO, and you can too. With a little customization, it's easy to layer in Music Album schema on Shopify, helping your store rank the same way the marketplaces do.
Why does this work so well for music? Because fans are the ultimate DTC customers. They already bring emotional loyalty, a hunger for exclusives, and an appetite for collectibles. Pair that with modern DTC tools and you get higher conversion, more repeat purchases, predictable cash flow from subscriptions and memberships, and first-party data you actually own.
The bottom line
The music industry doesn't have a demand problem. It has a conversion problem. Fans are already here, waiting to support the artists and labels they love. What's missing is a modern DTC strategy that bridges passion and purchase.
Ready to turn fan loyalty into growth?
Your fans are already invested in your music. Your ecommerce experience should make it easier for them to support you.
Softlimit helps independent labels and music brands build Shopify experiences that turn fan demand into direct-to-consumer growth.
Softlimit founder Ben Lord has spent more than 30 years in and around music, touring as a drummer since age 13, releasing records on independent labels including Temporary Residence Ltd. and Jagjaguwar, and working in Atlantic Records' New Media Division during the first digital music store launch. For the last decade he's built Softlimit into a Shopify Premier Partner helping brands like Sacred Bones, Polyvinyl, Moon Juice, and Misen grow.
