Most acts above a certain size have a merchandise option within their Spotify profile where they can sell up to three different items to fans via the DSP. These tend to be T-shirts or limited edition coloured vinyl versions of their latest albums and that’s about it. It’s all very… flat.

Which makes the move by Sony Music/RCA Records UK act Bring Me The Horizon to try to inject a bit of life into the idea of “Spotify + merchandise” all the more welcome. They are using their fans’ Spotify listening data to shape the T-shirt design that they can then buy. It is all part of the promotion for their amo album from January. By going to a dedicated site, fans log in with their Spotify details and then pick their six favourite tracks from amo. The site will then analyse their actual listening history of those tracks – matching it against the “loudness and energy” of the tracks in question based on Echo Nest data – and then generate a bespoke T-shirt design for them.

Given the importance of merchandise to metal and the subcultural currency in having a T-shirt that is outside the norm, this is a smart campaign that understands the world around the band and the kinds of things that will get fans fired up.

The problem with the standard Spotify merchandise window is that the items are rarely any different to what fans can buy on the act’s D2C store. Therefore, actually using Spotify play data to generate something unique for each fan is one of the better examples of linking streaming and merchandise that we have seen in a while.