D.I.Y.

Why Every Musician Needs a Website and What it Should Include

Online radioIn her recent article, The Music Business Reimagined, Vickie Nauman discusses the continuously evolving intersection between music and technology and the perpetual motion towards a digital music economy. More than ever before, the necessity to engage digitally and develop a strong online presence is extremely important for musicians, both established and emerging.

A question that logically arises is what do bands and performers need to be doing to compete in this digital music economy?

You Need Your Own Website

As great as social platforms like Facebook and SoundCloud are for reaching out to fans and self-promotion, it is good to have a base-camp or ground zero for you to be able to control, brand, and firmly establish your online presence in the long-run. You need a centralized location to get news out to your fans about shows, new songs, music videos, or album releases in the works. Your website can also help you secure press and promotional opportunities, as well as gigs. Ultimately, if you want to establish yourself as a serious artist and have people take you earnestly, then you need your own website.

What Your Website Should Include

There are so many user-friendly, convenient, and affordable website builder options out there, such as this option, that it makes setting up a site a breeze. However, what musicians’ websites need can be very different than your typical cookie-cutter website. So, when creating your website, there are a few features that you will want to make sure to work into the design.

Music

Obviously it’s a band website, so there needs to be an audio feature in the website design. If you want to take this a step further and allow people to purchase your music directly through your website, you will have to have ecommerce features and a payment platform set up as well. Alternatively, you can implement a “click here to purchase” button that redirects to whatever site you are selling your music on.

Events Calendar and Comments Section

Another pretty obvious feature. It is important to keep a detailed and up to date events calendar so that fans can easily find info for your latest gigs. It also allows new fans and agents the opportunity to see what you have been up to and get an idea of where you are on your career path, as well as the type of response that you are getting from the community. It is also good, then, to include a comments section so that fans can discuss your music and the latest shows directly on your website instead of just through social media.

A Contact Me Section

There should be a form or information for fans to be able to contact you, as well as agents trying to book talent for gigs. It should be short and sweet. This is also a good section to have a “Join the Mailing List” option, that way fans can subscribe to your mailing list to get updates on your music or upcoming shows, and you have an increasingly growing mailing list to be able to reach out to and with whom you can market your music.

All of Those Useful Links

You need to include links to all of your social platforms and any of the sites that you are active on. These can usually be embedded as icons at the bottom of your webpage, which can then be clicked and redirected to those platforms. This keeps all of your online presence organized and controlled. You should also link to your website through these social platforms whenever possible, creating good backlinks to help your site rank better in the search engine results, further increasing your online presence.

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2 Comments

  1. The website of any music artist should included an up-to-date list of collaborators they have recorded or performed with. Music is a very collaborative art form, and a fan of your collaborator is rather likely to become a fan of you already through knowing you from your collaboration and then getting curious – and vice versa.
    Back in the days of the old recording industry business model, artists from the same label often guested on each other’s records which is a good way to spread the love first and then spread the word.

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