If you’re in a band, or a solo artist, you might be wondering if it’s worth your time and money to create and maintain a musician website. After all, with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, isn’t that enough?
While it’s true that social media sites are a great way to connect with your fans, there are several other reasons why having a website is important. Check out this article to find out five reasons why!
Disclaimer: Some of the links in this blog post are affiliate links. When you click on the link, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Our recommendations are based on our own use and satisfaction of these tools and suggest you only use these tools if they will actually help you.
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Why Do You Need a Musician Website?
It's pretty simple. A musician website allows you to have control over the content you create, ownership of your fans and the message you deliver to your fans.
Unfortunately, social media platforms carry more risk than a musician website. Without notice, social media giants can shut down your artist page or shadow ban your page. And then what?
Only a small percentage of social media followers will actually see a post. Typically less than 1% of your followers will see your post on any given day. And, that post could be days old by the time your followers see it in their feed.
Now let's take a look at the top 5 reasons why you need to create your own musician website.
1. Professional Online Presence
A musician website provides a centralized online presence for promoting your work, establishing your unique brand, and presenting yourself as a professional musician. It serves as a digital portfolio where you can display your music, biography, upcoming events, merchandise, music press kit, and other relevant information.
Having a professional online presence can enhance your credibility and attract potential fans, collaborators, and industry professionals.
2. More Creative Control
Unlike social media platforms or streaming services where design and functionality is limited, a musician website gives you complete creative control over the presentation and customization of your content. You can design the website with your own unique style, personality, and artistic vision, creating a memorable and immersive experience for your visitors and your fans.
3. Monitization Opportunities
Your musician website should serve as a hub for monetization, offering various revenue streams beyond traditional music sales and performances. With the right website builder, you can sell digital music downloads, offer physical merchandise like t-shirts and CDs, concert tickets, exclusive fans only content, and even offer subscription-based services.
The best musician website builders should already have a merchandise platform built in and ready for you to customize with your products. Additionally, your website builder should have the ability to sell music directly from your website music player.
If you're looking to build an amazing musician website with complete customization tools to monetize and sell your music check out the WIX website builder. (This is an affiliate link)
4. SEO Opportunities
Search engine optimization is one of the most overlooked opportunities in a musician website. We often see sites built just for the sole purpose of having a site and never optimize. There are a lot of keywords out there that are relevant to your music. Incorporating these keywords into your website can help people discover your music.
The best way to update your website SEO is to focus on these core areas of optimization.
On-page optimization - optimize your individual pages to help search engines rank your pages and to attract more organic traffic to yor website. This includes the following:
Meta titles - this is a title that helps tell search engines what your page is about and is displayed as the main heading in a search result.
Meta descriptions - the meta description helps to further describe what the page is about and it always directly under the meta title.
H1 header titles - When you click on the search result, the H1 heading is the first title you see on the actual web page. It should always be the first heading in the hierarchy of header titles. The H1 defines what the page is about. It should match the meta title.
H2 header titles - H2 headers are the next heading in your hierarchy of header titles on your web page. They are typically used to help break down the page content into easier sections to scan and read.
H3 header titles - These headers are used to further define the H2 sections with more detail and information.
Content - the content on your website page should be relevant to the titles and the purpose of the page. If you're page is titled tour dates, then talk about tour dates, not photo galleries or information not releated to the meta tags and header tags. Use keywords in the content that represent the message you are relaying to the reader.
Images - This is so overlooked. All your images should be optimized for search engines and for people who have accessibility barriers to websites. Make sure to fill in the Alt Text section of every image with a short relevant description of the contents in the image.
Internal links - Internal links are those links that when clicked go to another page on your website. Internal links should lead to other pages that are relevant to the link. Done correctly, internal links can encourage visitors to explore more pages of your website and reduce bounce rates.
Off-page optimization - This involves building backlinks from other reputable websites, social media promotion or influencer marketing. Off-page optimization tells search engines that the website is credible and can boost rankings.
The best way for musicians to improve their off-page SEO is to reach out to online music websites and get published interviews and reviews about your music. By doing this, these site can link back to your website providing credability for your musician website.
5. Direct Fan Engagement
A professional musician website should allow you to have direct communication and engagement with your fans. You can collect email addresses through newsletter sign-ups or contact forms, allowing you to build a dedicated fanbase and stay connected with your audience.
You can also interact with fans through blog posts, forums, or exclusive content, developing a sense of community and loyalty around your music.
What is the Best Musician Website Builder?
As a professional digital marketer and website designer and developer, we prefer to use a musician website builder that offers the best possible tools to promote your music on a professional level. We recommend WIX website builder (this is an affiliate link) to create the most versatile music website. They definitely have all the tools a serious music artist needs to promote music.
Some of the best features built in to their platform include:
Custom music player to sell your music and built in music library
Email marketing platform to connect with your fanbase
SEO tools to optimize your website for search engines
Members only area for superfans
Hands-free merchandise store with print on demand capabilities
Event calendar and ticket sales
Bandsintown widget to automate tour dates
Marketing tools to promote on search engines and social media
Built in analytical tools
With the WIX website builder, you get a ton promotional tools to get your music out to the masses.
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Article by Lance Ziegler, CDMP
Lance is a certified digital marketing pro with over 12 years in the music industry. He specializes in music audits, music website design and development, music press kit development and music marketing release strategies.