Building a musician’s website from scratch can be scary. It takes a lot of time out of our days, and if you aren’t creative, you might struggle a little. With your socials in tip-top shape, you might think a website isn’t worth your time. However, there are many good things your website can do for your brand. We’re breaking down why you should dedicate time and energy to creating your musician’s website.
What Your Musician’s Website Is Here For
Your website is only meant for two things:
- Help you engage with current fans and make new ones
- Make you money
And that’s it! It doesn’t sound hard, does it? We will make it even easier for you and break down everything you need on your website and how.
Choose How To Build Your Musicians Website
There are two ways you can approach website building. If you feel creative enough, you could go the DIY pay-as-you-go route. Website builders such as Bandzoogle and Squarespace are great because they allow you to get creative while still having the option to drag and drop rather than working with coding.
Now, if you’ve given the builders a shot or don’t feel tech-savvy enough to maneuver website building, you should consider hiring a web designer. A designer will help you with the stepping stones of website creation.
If you feel competent with code, and especially if you feel like your main website service is blogging, we recommend WordPress. It has many moving parts and leaves plenty of room for creativity. However, this does take a lot more out of you, so if you really aren’t comfortable with coding or getting creative, we recommend sticking to the drag-and-drop options.
Make Your Homepage Pop!
One key factor you must consider while designing your website is navigation. Many people are glued to their phones and other electronic devices, so it’s important to know how your website displays on those different devices. You want something easy to navigate and appealing.
One-page scrolls are becoming increasingly popular due to its simplistic nature. You can easily scroll through your music, bio, and contact info as it all lays within the home page. If you have a special initiative or challenge, you want to make sure to name it something that is easy to understand or clickable such as “New Initiatives”, and not the name of the challenge itself.
Be consistent with your brand! Whatever colors you’re using on your socials, images that represent who you are, anything that is tied to your brand and your music, use it. Make sure the color scheme on your website matches your socials to create consistency within your channels. You should always start off a brand with a style board, that way your font, font size, and colors coincide with your brand.
Your socials are NON-NEGOTIABLE! Links to your active socials need to be placed somewhere easy to see and large enough to spot. Wherever you want to be found and followed, you share those links for anyone to reach on your site. Make it bold and make it big. We recommend putting social links on every page. If you have a footer section that is the same on every page, put your socials there for people to find.
Create Your Musician Website In 7 Sections
Here are the seven most essential sections to have on your website.
One: Your Pitch
Your pitch doesn’t have to be lengthy, it just have to give current and future fans a hit on what is your sound or what will they get. You can use sound-alikes, a quote from the press, anything that can speak volume on your talent. Share who you are in just a couple of sentences.
Two: EPK and Artist Bio
You’ll need a press kit on your website that includes photos, links, your bio, and your album art. You can add press quotes, links to interviews, and music videos. This is your proof. If a blog or playlist comes to your site, they can easily find everything important laid out for them.
The most important part of the press kit is your bio. It has to be up to date and tell a captivating story, as it is the foundation of your brand. Your photos need to also be part of your band. Selfies are nice, but save those for your socials. Take professional photos and have them on your site. You can either add instructions on how to download high-resolution photos or insert a link to a folder with these photos.
Three: Music! Stream, Buy, Pay What You Want
You are a musician; therefore, you must have music! Make sure people can easily find where to stream AND buy the music. You can’t force people to buy the music, so don’t skip out on adding links to streaming platforms. Chances are, if people don’t want to buy your music, they still won’t if that’s the only option you give them.
The pay what you want model is something we strongly recommend. It’s a way to allow fans to actually give you money. You can use Bandcamp or Bandzoogle for your fans to give you however much money they wish. You can also offer a free song download with email list subscription on your site. The goal is to give something as thanks, not necessarily that they will use the music download. This gift may keep them coming.
Four: Merch
People don’t usually spend money on music, so merch is a critical factor in making an income from a music career. A popular thing is creating bundles paired with singles, EPs, or album releases with different merch items in each bundle. You also don’t have to shell out a lot of money to create these bundles. There’s Printful, integrated with Bandzoogle; Merchbar, connected to Spotify; and Merch by Amazon.
Five: Live Shows/Streaming Shows/Tour Dates
If you play live or stream regularly, you want a page on your site dedicated to this. We LOVE Bandsintown. Once you set up the integration, adding shows on Bandsintown will automatically port onto your website. What’s cool about Bandsintown is that fans who opt in will get alerts to shows when you book them. On your Spotify page, Bandsintown will display upcoming tour dates, which fans can see when streaming your music.
Six: Email List
One key place to gather email addresses is through your website. You must directly ask people to sign up for your email list, as it’s not something they think to do. You must follow up by sending out an email at least once a month.
Creating a free download in exchange for an email is a great incentive to get people to sign up.
Seven: Your Contact
Press inquiries, booking inquiries, or anything that isn’t signing up for the newsletter list can reach you directly without you having to give them any personal information. You can set this up as either your email address or another one specifically for contact form submissions. You don’t want to make it hard for people to connect with you online. Make sure you add your socials on this page as well.
Get Into Action On Your Musicians Website
If you feel confident about your website, go through this checklist to ensure it is the best it could be. These action steps should be taken:
- Does my website load in a few seconds (less than 3)?
- Is the Homepage image popping?
- Will visitors get what kind of music you make just by dropping in?
- Is the navbar easy to see?
- Do you have all seven sections that were mentioned in this post?
- Is there a juicy offer when people join your email list?
- Does it look great on mobile?
- Does your site have video content?
- Do you have merch? Can people easily buy it?
- Do you have Google Analytics installed?
You absolutely should have Google Analytics because then you’ll be tracking how and where people are going on your site. This will allow you to adjust as you continue.
Now, you are ready to share your website with the world! If you would like a little guidance on building an effective website, reach out to us for our Musicians Website service. We will dedicate our time to helping you get your site set up in a way that will best reflect your brand!
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