In 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.