If you’ve been considering the idea of buying Beyoncé’s 1,000-euro empty wooden box, don’t worry, you’re not alone: other BeyHive fans have started saving to buy the umpteenth luxury merch item from their favorite billionaire artist. While I can think of better things you could do with that money, the idea has its appeal, no matter how absurd it may seem.
It’s a pine luxury box, with a green velvet interior, a faux crocodile leather strap, and an engraved bee, designed to store Beyoncé’s vinyl records. It costs €837.95 in Spain, while in the United States it’s sold for $948.01, a figure that echoes Beyoncé’s birth date (September 4, 1981). The box is tied to the reissue of ‘B’Day’, which marks its 20th anniversary, and, of course, the vinyl records are sold separately.
We won’t be the ones to argue that Beyoncé makes her fans spend such a fortune on a box that essentially contains air inside, but the reality is that artists like selling cool stuff and fans like buying it. Even Lorde’s controversial Music Box made some sense: conceived to reinvent the physical format, it contained everything except a CD or vinyl, though it did include a download to grab ‘Solar Power’ and bonus tracks, plus handwritten letters and other bits.
@baderalsafar Travis Scott McDonald’s Chicken Nugget 🍗 #foryoupage #foryou #fyp #sneakerhead #hypebeast #baderalsafar #travisscott #mcdonalds #chickennuggets ♬ original sound – Bader Al Safar
With the decline of physical formats, artists have had little choice but to improvise to maximize sales by selling wildly impractical items. Playing with the concept of ‘Tension’, Kylie Minogue released some hangers as merch, despite having confessed a phobia of them. Not to mention the giant chicken nugget-shaped pillow from Travis Scott tied to his McDonald’s collaboration: he asked for $750 for the silliness, so we hope his fans managed to sleep after spending what amounts to rent on it.
@baking.by.ben Here’s what’s in the Solar Power music box! Rip the foot poster 😔 #lorde #solarpower #foryoupage #fypシ #music #unboxing ♬ Solar Power – Blink 3 Times – Lorde
Some products have proven more useful than others, as artists have often sold clothing, such as Lady Gaga’s Chromatica jockstrap, or even furniture, like Bon Jovi’s folding chair. Although none have gone as far as KISS’s coffin, which took merchandising to the ultimate extreme: you’re not only a fan of KISS, you can also have KISS literally accompany you to the grave. The irony is that the buyer will be the only one who doesn’t get to enjoy it.
Others, like Björk, are among the artists who have turned their physical products into artistic or conceptual objects, not merely merchandising. Of course, it isn’t lost on anyone that the Biophilia box set, with tuners tuned specifically for each song on the album, or the Utopia box, which included 14 bird calls, were pretty expensive. These products later fund her balloon dresses, no doubt, because they sell out or come close.
Merch is the artist-fan agreement that goes beyond buying the CD, the vinyl, or a concert ticket. It demonstrates loyalty and devotion and, for the artists, allows them to squeeze the fan’s wallet: once someone has already bought the album, the T-shirt, the ticket, or the vinyl, there are still many other things to sell. The problem is that the exorbitant prices of many of these products are outright daylight robbery, perpetrated by artists who have more than enough money to support three or four generations.
It’s true these products have emotional meaning. They tighten the bond with the audience, since the more you invest in an artist’s universe, the more connected you feel. They also build community, because these objects function as recognizable symbols among fans. Owning that box, that necklace—as Lana Del Rey’s that seemed designed for snorting coke—or that limited item means belonging to something.
@baking.by.ben Here’s what’s in the Solar Power music box! Rip the foot poster 😔 #lorde #solarpower #foryoupage #fypシ #music #unboxing ♬ Solar Power – Blink 3 Times – Lorde
But capitalist logic also involves creating demand before the product. It’s a basic tenet of capitalism: the product appears first, and then the desire to possess it is born. There wasn’t any prior demand for Beyoncé’s empty box. No one had woken up thinking, “what I really need right now is a giant nugget-shaped cushion,” until Travis Scott decided such a thing could exist.
Current merch aims to turn consumption into collecting and, in the process, restore value to physical editions. If streaming has made music intangible, artists can turn their releases into luxury objects, design pieces, or collectible items. You no longer just buy a record; you buy something you can show off, store, and place on a shelf.
Seen like that, even Beyoncé’s empty box has some advantage over some of the experiences being sold lately: at least you’re left with the box. Because paying for an “audio-only” ticket, like the ones Bruno Mars has offered, would be an even more absurd expense. What do you have left then? An “audio-only” souvenir? At least Queen B’s mega box is surely built to last many, many, many years. She’d better.
