Figuring out how to build the best website possible for your band can feel like a big job. Even if you already have a vision for your website, how do you get your creative ideas to translate into a professional website that you’ll be proud to share?
The good news is you don’t need to learn the technical ins and outs of web development to build a top-notch band website. You can easily create a band website using a website builder—a platform that gives you templates, design tools, and content features to put together a complete professional website for your music.
As a musician, you need your website to serve a particular purpose: to engage your fans, promote your projects, monetize your music, and make an impression on industry folks. You’ll be best served by a website builder that does a good job catering specifically to your goals as a musician.
So here are 11 things to look out for when choosing the best website builder for your music:
1. Website templates made for musicians
A great music website starts with a great website template; it will help you build a stunning website much more quickly—and with much less effort—than starting from scratch. When choosing a website builder for your band, look for one that offers a wide variety of mobile-responsive templates that have been designed specifically for the needs of musicians.
2. Easy editing tools to build content
Building a website can be a fun and creative process when the technical stuff is out of the way. With the right website builder you won’t have to learn any coding—it should provide design tools that any non-technical person can quickly master. Look for a website builder with a simple-to-use visual interface that lets you easily drop content onto web pages, drag-and-drop it to organize however you want, and customize the design to match your aesthetic style.
Your website building platform should be user-friendly, so that you can regularly update your pages when you have new music music releases, tours, and other projects to promote.
3. Strong music player options
Your music is your core product, which means it should be front-and-center on your website.
You’ll want to choose a website builder that has a built-in music player that allows you to upload your music. And you’ll want to have lots of flexibility with how your music is displayed and how visitors can interact with it.
For example, you might want to feature singles and albums on your website separately. You might also want to add music only to specific pages, or you might want the music to keep playing while visitors browse through the different pages of your site.
Maybe you’ll want to allow visitors to download the tracks for free, or to purchase music directly through the player. And what if you want to give listeners a custom preview of your music rather than the full tracks? These are the kinds of options you’ll want from your website builder.
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4. Tools for selling music, merch, and tickets
Your music website isn’t just for looks—it’s also a powerful direct-to-fan monetization platform. The website builder you choose needs to be chock full of tools that are specifically designed to help you earn a living from your music career. Let’s consider what you can sell as a musician:
As a creator, you can sell your music to fans—as direct digital downloads, and also in physical formats like vinyl and CD. Make sure your website builder gives you robust tools for selling any kind of music in any kind of format.
As your own brand, you can sell merch like t-shirts, buttons, stickers, and hats to fans right from your own band website—you don’t need to use a 3rd-party merch platform. You might be carrying your own product inventory to sell, or you may want the option to sell print-on-demand merch to avoid up-front costs. So make sure your website builder has robust eCommerce tools that give you flexible options for selling print-on-demand merch right off your website.
As an entertainer, you can sell tickets to your shows right from your website, rather than using a 3rd-party ticketing platform. Make sure your website platform offers ticketing tools to help you monetize your events.
And finally, as a prolific producer of content, you can get creative in how you monetize your work by crowdfunding, selling monthly subscriptions to fans, or putting out a tip jar.
Make sure your website platform has built-in tools that empower you to earn income off your creative efforts. Better yet, choose a platform that doesn’t take any commission from your sales.
5. Included web hosting and domain name
Your website has to live somewhere online—that is, it needs to be hosted somewhere. And it needs an address so people can find it, which is where a domain name comes in. Without those two critical components, you don’t have a website.
When you use a website builder your hosting should be fully integrated, meaning the many very technical details of web hosting are taken care of for you automatically. Look for a website builder that has best-in-class hosting infrastructure included so that your site is always fast and reliable for your visitors, without you having to ever think about it.
A domain name—also known as your .com website address, or URL—is often purchased separately from your website and renewed every year, with some setup required to make it work. But many website builders offer a free domain name with your website for the first year or two, with no special setup required. Some website builders offer a domain name free indefinitely as long as you’re a member—something to consider when choosing yours.
6. Integrated music services
When you publish a band website, it joins an entire ecosystem of other platforms and services that represent you and your music online—platforms like Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Bandsintown, or Airbit. It’s only natural that your website should integrate easily into your online ecosystem.
When choosing the best website builder for your band, look for one that offers integrations with platforms that musicians use. They’ll make it easier for you to set up and maintain your website, and to sync your information across platforms.
7. Robust fan data and analytics
If you’ve ever poked around in your Spotify for Artists account then you understand how powerful data can be for your music career. In the digital world data is everything—it can make or break a music career. Labels and publishers know this, and so do savvy artists.
There are various places you can access data about how fans engage with your music and content, but your own website is perhaps the single most powerful, accessible, and affordable way to measure this information. Your website is something that you own, which means it’s your data—and that matters a lot. When choosing the best website builder for your band, pick one with robust fan analytics and reporting—that puts this powerful data in your hands.
8. Built-in mailing list tools
Mailing lists and websites go together like snares and kicks—they’re both things you own online (making them rare and very valuable!), and they’re both widely recognized tools to deepen your engagement with fans.
Any website builder you choose should not only have built-in forms to collect email signups from your website—it should also have robust tools that let you organize and send newsletter campaigns to your mailing list. Managing your website and mailing list from the same place will save you the hassle of trying to sync details between two separate platforms, so look for a website builder that has a full suite of mailing list tools built in and included with your subscription plan.
9. Specialized music promotion tools
Musicians know this: promoting music is very challenging. Music promotion is also unique; musicians need specialized and specific tools to effectively promote their music. Your band website is a very important component of your overall music promo machine, and it can also be a marketing multi-tool.
When choosing a website builder, pick one that has powerful tools to help you with your music marketing efforts: tools to create electronic press kits, music smart links, and music landing pages. Using a website builder that offers these tools all together in one place will make your music promo easier and more effective.
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10. SEO for musicians
Here’s a basic fact: you can’t do SEO without a website. Showing up big in search engines is a strong reason to have a website in the first place, so any website builder worth its salt will give you the tools for optimization.
SEO for musicians is unique for a few reasons, including the fact that Google handles searches for music and musicians in a very specific way. When choosing a website builder, pick one that understands this point, and that offers musician-specific SEO tools and optimizations that set you up for search engine success, such as built-in metadata for music and events..
11. Musician-friendly support
A good website builder will help make your life easy, but sometimes you’re going to run into questions and issues that pause your work.
When that happens it can be very discouraging to have to rely on a support team that doesn’t understand or care much about what it means to be a musician. Or worse, when the only help available is from a soulless AI chatbot.
When choosing a website builder, take a good look at what kind of support they offer and consider picking one that offers a top-notch support team who understands musicians (and maybe are also musicians themselves) and can help you not only build a great website but can help with your music goals as well.
A high-quality website builder is going to save you lots of time and energy; both valuable resources that you can instead put towards other parts of your music career. When choosing the best website builder for you, take a close look at the specific features that make it helpful for musicians specifically. You’ll end up with a platform that puts more useful tools at your fingertips, and gives you better bang for your buck in the long term.
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- Promote your music on your own unique website.
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- Grow your fan base with built-in marketing tools.
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