Reverb.com Acquired By Etsy

Reverb.com has announced that it is being acquired by Etsy – the online marketplace for handmade and vintage items.

In an official statement, Reverb CEO David Kalt shared the news:

Today is an exciting day for the Reverb community: Earlier today, we announced that we signed an agreement to be acquired by Etsy. We expect the acquisition to close in the coming months. When it does, Reverb will remain a standalone business, but with the added support of Etsy—the global online marketplace for handmade and vintage items, with millions of buyers and sellers from nearly every country in the world.

Less than a decade ago, I was working as a guitar store owner and ran into a problem: Buying and selling instruments online was difficult and expensive. What started out as a simple solution—a two-way marketplace built for musicians by musicians—quickly grew into so much more. With your help, we’ve built a community that musicians from all walks of life turn to for income to support their families, inspiration to fuel their passions, tools to create new music, and more. But we’re far from finished.

With Etsy as our parent company, we’ll remain the marketplace built for the music community by a team of musicians and music lovers. Your ability to buy, sell, learn, and connect on Reverb will not change. At the same time, we’ll have added resources to continue growing and improving the Reverb community. Think of it like going to see your all-time favorite band and getting a surprise sit-in from another musician you admire.

Reverb.com has succeeded because, for many users, it has provided a better alternative to eBay for buying and selling music gear. Will this still be the case as they try to find synergies with Etsy? Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

18 thoughts on “Reverb.com Acquired By Etsy”

  2. Why do you have to ruin a good thing? I have a bad feeling that this will lead to higher costs for selling items and the layout/structure of the site will change. It is perfect as it is, don’t change it.

  3. I’m curious what sort of growth they have in mind. International sellers are all over Reverb already with the same items they have listed on eBay.

  4. Here come higher fees, folks. I’m an Etsy seller and they have been slowly increasing fees, introducing new and exciting ways to reduce my profits while offering the exact same level of service. Now they have a new extortion service where if you don’t pay them $10/month on top of the listing and selling fees, your listings will always fall to the bottom of searches and your sales will plummet. Just a few days ago they announced that if you don’t offer “free” shipping to your customers, your listings will also fall to the bottom of searches. I say free in quotes because in the same breath they offer you helpful advice on how to increase the price of your items to offset the “free” shipping.

  5. “Your ability to buy, sell, learn, and connect on Reverb will not change.”

    This does mention the seller fees or schemes to improve Reverb’s profits, or following Esty’s recent business practices.

  6. Wow, considering Etsy’s track record with small scale manufacturers of music gear (Ian Fritz among others), I think this will suck.

  9. Undoubtedly, Etsy will ruin this platform. They managed to completely ruin their own with not just the fee structures, yet the seemingly arcane and deliberately difficult seller service issues that have plagued the platform for years.

    This will only mean that another avenue will open for a company to enter the fray and become the next Reverb.

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