 What's going on it's your man Kory welcome to the digital dashboard I'll be giving you tips on how to market your songs and get those numbers booming now today. What I want to talk with you about is how you can set up a merch bundle and I mean like an actual legit merch bundle that would count towards your album sales on Billboard if you're an artist who's in a position where they're trying to do something like that right. But if an artist who's just been hearing about merch bundles you saw all about the commotion with Nicki Minaj and Travis Scott and DJ Khaled and Tyler the Creator and you just wonder what exactly is that and how could I do it when I get to that point then like I said I got you so stick around for the rest of this video now before we get into all of that come and follow me on Instagram I make sure to put my ad name on the screen come talk to me come engage with me come give me some video ideas all of that good stuff now with that being said let's get right into it now first things first what exactly is a merch bundle right now it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like it is a bundle of different items usually like a t-shirt or maybe like a poster or something that is then bundled with an album and it's kind of a tactic that major label artists have been using to game the charts for years like years this dates back all the way to even when Prince was putting music out now the concept from it pretty much comes that you know labels kind of realized that there was some artists whose merch sales outweighed their ticket sales they were able to move thousands and thousands and thousands of merch units and maybe not the same amount of people in actual ticket sales to events so they decided to put them together and get them to count towards the overall sales now it is a hundred percent totally legit process it's a game that you can play you just have to know how to get into it now one of the reasons that we heard about merch bundles so recently was because of the controversy between DJ Khaled and Tyler created right DJ Khaled felt cheated because Tyler's album beat him on the billboard he was saying it was due to merch bundles it was a weird thing because DJ Khaled was on the merch bonus as well and we even saw a similar instance back when Nicki Minaj was kind of beefing that Travis Scott over it right it's been a very prevalent topic in mainstream rap for like the last year and a half two years now a lot of people think that this is a practice that is held only to major label artists but like I said it is a very simple system that you have to play about there is a very simple set of rules that you have to play about and as long as you do it as long as you do the process then technically your merch sales count now like I said in order to play the game you have to know the rules right and as of January 3rd of this year 2020 billboard pretty much changed the rules around merch bundling and album sales just to pretty much give a very cohesive strict guideline that everyone must follow so as long as you follow by these three rules these three rules right here and then of course you the system is set up then like I said your albums would count now the first rule to it all is that each item in the bundle must be for sale separately on the website so if your merch bundle is let's say a t-shirt a sticker in the album the t-shirt must be for sale on the website the sticker must be for sale on the website and then the album must be for sale on the website and then you have the entire bundle that is a really big part of it it's pretty much one of the ways they can see that you're trying to actually run like a whole commerce of merch strategy and not just really banking on the bundle so remember that each item must be for sale individually the second thing that you have to wait here by is that the price of the individual items must be lower than the price of the bundle by at least $3.49 now $3.49 is pretty much the lowest number that billboard would count as an actual album sale like an album was at least be $3.49 for it to be counted so for instance if your merch bundle is $25 then the t-shirt in that merch bundle in the example from earlier the t-shirt in an example must be at least $3.49 cheaper than the bundle that same thing goes for the sticker same thing goes for any hoodies posters whatever you're selling at least $3.49 remember that and the third rule is that these items must be for sale and the merch bundle must be for sale on your own direct to consumer website not any third-party apps meaning that pretty much everything that's been sold has to be through a website or a space that you control if you're signed to a label then a space or website that you and your label control and it's pretty much so that people don't gain the system by doing let's say a really large brand partnership right so that you don't just go in let's say you partner with Sprite put your album on Sprite's platform and then you get I don't know half a million downloads and it counts but it like really was Sprite that didn't match you it's to protect against that pretty much so it must come from a domain a space that you control that you are pretty much pretty much running direct to consumer from not from any other third-party platform and once you kind of go through the process of you know really thinking about your merch strategy moving forward if you as long as you adhere to these rules and these guidelines and you are eligible for your merch bundles to count towards your album sales now the rest of it is just pretty much a pretty simple sign-up process now all you have to do and are you ready for this is go to the title registration website for Nielsen SoundScan and fill it up that's it that's all you have to do now it's not a hard process and I'll leave the link to that website in the description below for you to go and check out but it's a pretty simple process you just put in your album title your artist name of course the genre who's your distributor who's your label all that basic information they're like you know most companies handling stuff like that one they're really big piece of it or the really big part of it is you must make sure to have the same UPC code on these items being attributed to the album so I know I think most distributors give you a UPC code when you register your project I think Tunecore does I'm not completely sure if this show kid does somebody can let me know in the comment section if I'm wrong I don't think though but if your distributor does not create UPC codes and I know that there are websites and companies out there that would do it for you I'm not there's not one I can think about the top of my head but I know I've seen it before just trust me on it yeah that's pretty much it make sure that your bundle follows those three rules that Billboard said earlier this year go through the Nielsen SoundScan website register make sure that you have that same UPC code being attributed to the album to that website and to all of your products and then you just wait for you to get accepted and yeah that's pretty much it just make sure that you are following those guidelines set by Billboard go to the Nielsen SoundScan website fill out their form make sure you have your UPC codes and then you just wait and then from that point your album sales and your merch bundles will all get lumped together and count towards your total album sales which will count towards your billboard so if you are an artist who sells a lot of merch pieces like you have a pretty sizable fan base this could be a pretty cool way for you to game the system again the billboard charts which that's a whole different video for another day other than that if you feel like you learned anything today please like and share this video hit those post notifications as well as I wouldn't want you to miss anything once again my name is Kory and I'll see you next time