Band T-shirts are sometimes — or even often — the highest quality T-shirts available.

Small local bands tend to source from local manufacturers and distributors. And as they consider their merch a form of advertising, it pays to invest in material that lasts.

But the bigger and more volume-based franchises tend to get their clothes from the same global production and distribution chains as every other Fast Fashion brand. Taylor Swift isn't contracting with a dozen different local print shops per venue to fill an order big enough to saturate a stadium. She's going to the same folks that sell to H&M and Zara.