August 30, 2010

By By Cortney Harding

Etsy, the five year old online handmade goods marketplace, made the news last week when it closed a $20 round of funding, pushing its valuation up to $300 million. The New York-based company has grown 72% in the last year, and has 5.2 million members, 400,000 sellers, six million listed items and about 700 million monthly page views.

Click on the ?music? section of Etsy, though, and you find a hodgepodge of guitar picks, iPod cases, and instruments, along with a handful of CDs. There are signs that Etsy is taking some steps to enter the music market ? it recently teamed up with indie band the Walkmen to offer a series of pre-order packages with t-shirts and posters by Etsy artists ? but it could be doing much more.

For instance, Etsy?s customer base have proven themselves to be both rabid supporters of the DIY mindset and very willing to spend the money to prove it. While not every artist would fit in on Etsy, certain independent acts, particularly those with a strong design sense, would likely attract a large audience. Working with Etsy would also allow opportunities for collaboration with designers and screenprinters, among others, which could lead to some fantastic merch.

For Etsy to succeed in the music space, it would need to focus on curation ? an area the website lacks right now. But an initiative in which indie musicians were highlighted on the Etsy homepage and encouraged to work with other artists could bring a new revenue stream to the company.

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