I currently own a blog site on my favorite music artist, and it gets good traffic and a decent amount of visitors. Some of the visitors have emailed me a few times asking me to sell some merchandise on the site, such as a clothing line.........I have been thinking about this for a while now, and I think it would be great idea for me to create a store where we sell t-shirts available for people to buy. This is were I need everyones help - do you think I will be allowed to sell t-shirts with the a picture of the music artist and their name on the shirts? Or can I get in serious trouble and get sued etc. I am not the official website.........Im more like a fansite....... but I see on eBay that they are selling t-shirts with the music artists pictures and names on? I hope you guys understand my problem and I would really appreciate a reply back with some advice if anyone has any.
If you buy them, you probably can sell them. People sell used stuff all the time. Your best bet is to become an affiliate of amazon or allposters.com and then you can put pics of t-shirts and get a cut of the profit. I have a celebrity site and do just that. Stephen C
I want to create a store on my website were users can buy them from there... don't wanna use Amazon or any other website. I'm just mainly wondering if I will get sued for this and get my website shut down, thanks
For any image, you have to own the copyright if you want to use the image. If you've taken a photo of the musician, you can use that because you own the copyright. You can't take a photo of part of their album cover or use someone else's photo without permission. Because you're a fan site, you might have an advantage - if a fan has taken a good photo, you can contact the fan and try to negotiate (or buy) the right to reuse the image... they might be thrilled to have their artwork published. Using the name of the band might also be a problem, because they might have a trademark on it or it might have other legal protection (for example, the phrase "Rolling Stones" in the same typeface as used on one of their album covers might be protected as a copyrighted image in addition to a trademark). You might not even be safe is you're buying preprinted shirts for resale. If your supplier doesn't have the right to use the images, they might get confiscated by customs agents. Customs? Yeah, a lot of stuff is made overseas. I've even been buying single things from overseas, and I offer services which may be performed overseas. Did you check the band's web site and their agent's web site to see if they offer any images with permission for you to reuse them? Some bands have different policies than others do.
It is true that you have to own the copyright, but that alone is NOT enough. You cannot use another person's image commercially without their consent. Even professional photographers obtain model releases in order to commercially exploit their own photos. Read this article about Privacy Rights and Publicity Rights. In other words, just because you take a picture of the musician yourself, or get a photo from a fan who took the photo and gives you a license to use it, does not mean that you can put the image of the musician on T-shirts and sell them.
You can buy tshirts in bulk from somewhere else. Lots a bands sell shirts through authorized vendors who may give you a big discount for bulk orders of 100+ shirts. Then you can resell them. As someone else previously pointed out, it would be like selling used shirts, except nobody has worn them yet hehe.
Beware of copyright infringement. You'll want to look into intellectual property. Merely taking a photo of the artist doesnt give you the right to the use of that image. You can get in to serious trouble if you profit from someone elses copyright.
The easiest way to do this is find a t-shirt supplier with an affiliate program - there are dozens so you want to find the one with the shirts you want. eg. zazzle.com or hottopic.com both have aff programs with band shirts. How it works is you advertise their officially licensed band shirts on your site with a special code, then when people buy shirts the company pays you 10-15% affiliate commission. With this system you have no inventory and no legal hassles trying to license designs. Ive sold hundreds of shirts of various kinds as an affiliate.
I'm thinking of just not putting a pic of the music artist on the t-shirt, and leaving it as just text. Seems to be the better option.