How to Create a Music Website
Whether you are a new artist with a fresh new sound, or you have been around and are ready to reach out to a whole new audience and get more exposure, there are endless benefits to setting up your own music website.
Web Hosting
The first thing to consider when creating your own music website is web hosting. You will want to put clips of your music onto your website, you will want to make sure there is enough space and bandwidth to cover how much you will want to put up. There are several free hosting sites that can get you started, but once you are set up you may want to consider a paid service to provide better quality. Do not worry though, your hard work on the free hosting site can often be kept by simply upgrading through the same provider.
Style and Feel
A music website is often the first interaction many fans will have with you when they stumble upon it. They have never heard your music before and really don’t know what to expect. The style and feel of your music website is what will first queue in your fan that this may be their type of music and will encourage them to click the play button on your tracks. A country artist will generally not want a website that feels more like death metal. So customize your site with a javascript slideshow plugin to make it feel like you and your music, draw in your fans with a style and feel that will make them comfortable.
Content
Within the world wide web, it is often stated that “content is king”. This is very true for any website on the internet. If your first web page does not have what the reader is looking for, they will not stay and browse through your website. Your front page has to catch their attention, but your website must be easy to navigate so they can find all of your other information. Things you will want to consider including in a music website includes music samples, photos, news, biography and most importantly, a contact page. Should a recording company stumble upon your talent, you want to make sure that they are able to quickly and easily get a hold of you or your agent.
Getting Visitors
There are a lot of different ways to get visitors to your music website. First, you want to make sure that there are a lot of key words specific to your music within the pages. Don’t overdo it, but using important words like ‘Country Music’ or ‘Rock n Roll’ two or three times is easy to do and it will help bring your page a little higher in search engines. Your next step is to turn to social media, places like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and many others will help you link with your friends and fans. Social media sites can spread your name like wildfire and help turn people toward your music website where they can get a much better feel for who you are and what your music is like.
Creating a music website can be exciting and at times, overwhelming. Don’t give up though, you will find that once the effort is put into creating your music website, the rewards are well worth it as you spread your name and your music to an endless number of new potential fans.