I agree. I think it’s less about how popular someone is in their own time, although that’s clearly important, but how much they endure with future generations.

T-shirt merchandising is probably more to do with who owns the rights though and if they want to sell products in places like Target or Tescos.

For a long time you couldn’t download Beatles albums on iTunes. That was purely down to the dispute over the name “Apple” rather than popularity of the music.