Musician Websites: Things to Consider Before Making One
Musician Websites: Things to Consider Before Making One
Should I Make a Website for My Music?
What is the Best Website Builder for Music Artists?
Key Takeaways
With a huge amount of music being released on a daily basis, having a musician website can help you to differentiate yourself from the crowd
The Building a musician website is likely much easier and cheaper than you may have realised! You can avoid paying website build costs and domain hosting costs but using a simple website creation tool which makes it easy to build it yourself and includes domain hosting in its costs
Our choice for the best music website hosting provider is Bandzoogle as it was created specifically for musicians, is significantly cheaper than other website providers, has extremely simple to use templates, includes free domain hosting and also has all the musician specific tools you will ever need as part of their general service offering which other providers either don’t have or is not a core feature of their offering
When used effectively, a musician website can be a great revenue generation tool by allowing you to build relationships with your fans, sell music and merch, create fan subscriptions, sell tickets and more
Should I Make a Website for My Music?
With over 100,000 songs per day being added to Spotify (as reported by Billboard), it can feel impossible to differentiate yourself among the crowd as a musician. In such a landscape it becomes more and more important to differentiate yourself from other musicians in as many ways as possible. One of these differentiators, which is likely to be easier than you may have initially thought to set up, is to have your own musician website. This will set you apart by giving your music and artistry a professional online presence which will act as a central point for promoting your music.
Some of the many benefits of having a musician website are:
Having a central place to promote your music to fans that you control
Your website, is exactly that. It’s yours! Your website is not controlled by TikTok or Facebook or any other external platform. Therefore you can use it as you like to promote your music. You can add links to all music platforms, videos, merch, tour dates etc. and get as creative as you like in how you present it to your audience.
An up to date source of info for journalists
Your website is a great place to house your artist bio which is not only interesting for your audience to read but is also a useful place to direct journalists to get more information about you
A way to monetise your music
Many music consumption platforms pay pittance per listen to artists. With your website you can get more creative about ways to make money with your music such as creating merch along with releases or using platforms such as Patreon to create a paid community and adding these links to your website. We will explore this further in the blog article.
A vehicle to create deeper relationships with your audience
A mailing list or a blog can be a great way to connect with your fans. A website can allow you to create a blog and also a page where people can subscribe to your tribe which can allow you to more personally keep in touch with them, tell them about new releases, tours etc.
Need help creating your first website?
What is the Best Website Builder for Music Artists?
Without going into details of the huge number of options your have for website builders for your musician website, we will have a look at the major ones Bandzoogle, Wix and Squarespace below.
Our Favourite: Bandzoogle
All of the options will be able to do all the basics such as creating a nice looking custom website however at the end of the day Bandzoogle was created for musicians so all the features that you need such as creating an Electronic Press Kit, selling your music, incorporating tour dates etc. are all built into its interface. It is also the only one that including free domain hosting whereas the other two options only offer this for free for a year, and in the case of Squarespace, only if you go with the yearly option. This can add up as an additional yearly cost which can be avoided.
Furthermore, cost wise, Bandzoogle has also proved to be the best.
Full disclosure, at MPW, we are an affiliate of Bandzoogle but this is only because they have proven to be the best website provider for our music students time and time again and through our own research we haven’t managed to find another website provider who compares if we are looking specifically at musician websites.
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Musician Website Creation Tool?
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How Do Music Websites Make Money?
Selling your music
OK so this is an obvious one but in the era of streaming, may not be on you have thought of. You could sell direct download links to your music by either adding links to platforms where your music is already available for sale or keep all the profits for yourself by selling it directly through your website!
Selling Your Merch
Have a cool idea for a t-shirt or sticker for your band? Certain website creation tools such as Bandzoogle allow you to not only sell merch on your website but have it created on demand so that you are only paying for the merch that is being sold.
Create a membership and offer premium content
Remember, to be making a sustainable living from your music, your don’t need to have a million fans! Even 1,000 dedicated fans will be enough to sustain you if they are willing to give you even $5 a month. So think about what you could offer your super fans to make joining your tribe appealing, is it exclusive access to new content? A behind the scenes look at your creation process? Or a personalised song written for them?
Advertising and Sponsorship
This can take more time and may not be your style depending on your brand but if you create a blog on your website which starts to gain some traction, you could also add advertising of other brans on your page which could be another source of passive income for you. Before going down this route though, it’s may be useful to realise though that this will require a lot of time in coming up with blog articles, so if you’re time poor, perhaps this strategy can be left to last.
Want to Start Producing but Not Sure Where to start?
How Much Does It Cost to Build a Music Website?
Build Cost ≈ $2,000 (avoidable)
To get a custom website created by someone else, you can easily be quoted $2,000 USD but you can definitely do this yourself and avoid this cost! Most website builders these days are very simple and intuitive to use with simple drag drop functions and customizable templates. Bandzoogle also have multiple musician specific templates which will help yo prompt you on all the things you need to add to your website.
Domain registration ≈ $110 per year (avoidable)
This is the cost of purchasing and maintaining your domain or your website address (i.e. your www.bandname.com). If you were to purchase this separately, this can cost roughly $25 USD a year plus the cost of an SSL or security certificate at approximately $90 a year which you will want to have so that people don’t receive a privacy warning when they enter your website. You definitely don’t want your fans to have any concerns about putting in their payment details on your website with a scary privacy warning pop up when they get to your page! Again the domain registration fees can often be avoided as some website hosts will include this in their monthly hosting fee.
Website hosting ≈ $15 per month (unavoidable)
This is the cost of your musician website being “hosted” or made available for people to visit and is usually a monthly or yearly fee. This fee cannot be avoided unfortunately. There are some “free” website hosting companies but these will have a logo promoting the website company on your website which can give the website an amateur look. These options will also often give your website significant limitations in usability which you don’t want to limit yourself to as you want to build a website which will last you artist growth for at least a few years.
In conclusion, websites are likely easier and cheaper to make an maintain than you may have thought! Time time you invest in creating one will benefit you in the long term by giving your music a professional presence, allowing you to stand out from the crowd.
by Xylo Aria - Founder of Music Production for Women
