Web Hosting to Help You Find New Fans & Nurture Your Existing Fan Base
The music industry is hugely competitive with nearly 28 million musicians out there in just the United States alone.
No matter what type of musician you are, from a violinist to a hard rock band to playing the tambourine, if you want people to listen to your music (and maybe even pay for it!), you have to have a website.
Why Do Musicians Need a Website?
For any musician that wants to make it big, they will most likely need a website. Having a beautifully designed site gives you a look of professionality that is difficult to replicate by anything else. Your fans can quickly check out your page and get all your necessary information. It also makes it easy for someone to book you, check out upcoming tour dates, or even to buy merchandise.
Social Media Sites Go out of Style
Having profiles on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more can be a great idea, but you should both social media in tandem with your site.
SoundCloud, the distribution and sort of quasi-social media platform for musicians is an important part of the mix as well.
That said, it would be a shame to invest too much into one platform as musicians spent tons of time and effort cultivating their social media presence to lose that connection to their fans once the platform went out of style.
MySpace is a well know social media platform that fell out of style.
Who knows when the next big social media platform will fall? While you should put your name out there on those platforms, you should put all your eggs in one basket. Having a website should be a priority because it most likely will outlast everything else.
Control
You can control exactly what you want on your site by showcasing videos, photos, or run an e-commerce section driven by a shopping cart and e-commerce hosting.
You don’t have to worry about your fans not seeing your updates. You can also design the site as you want, and therefore you have total control over your public image.
Alright. Now that you know you probably do need a website, what’s next?
Finding the Right Host
Reliable and Fast
Having a slow website means that people will leave your page before it even fully loads. Make sure you have a host that can provide you with fast speeds and can play your music at the pace you meant it to play without any buffering.
You also want to find a host that guarantees an uptime of at least 99.95%.
With a higher uptime guarantee, you will experience less downtime for your website.
Disk Space and Bandwidth
When you are first starting out, you will have to estimate how much amount of disk space it will occupy. The more songs, pictures, and other information you add to your site take up tons of space.
Websites dedicated to music or videos take up a tremendous amount of data space, so you need to calculate for that accordingly. Roughly one minute of high-quality music files will take about 1MB. For putting videos out there, it will take up approximately 560 MB of data.
As you can see, you will need tons of disc space and storage to make sure your website can run efficiently.
Website Builders
Don’t know even a single line of code? That is okay because website builders make it incredibly easy for you to build a stunning website without having to spend all of your hard-earned money.
Many musicians find that website builder hosting enables them to quickly get a professional looking site on the web.
Web hosts even have templates that are specifically created to showcase the talents of musicians, so it makes it very easy for you!
WordPress
WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) out there, and once you start using it, you will see why! You can customize WordPress completely thanks to the more than 52,000 plugins out there.
Designers created hundreds of these plugins specifically to help musicians build a better website and showcase their talents. You can even use an e-commerce plugin if you want to sell any merchandise off your site.
To use WordPress, you will still need WordPress hosting. Many hosts do have WordPress optimized plans which allow one-click installations, are plugin-compatible, and will even allow you to host multiple WordPress pages through the site.
Before making your choice, make sure to look at WordPress themes specifically for musicians. Many times, you can get an excellent one for free, but you should also consider the paid themes. Because they are better quality, these themes will cost you a one-time fee. It might be worth it!
Good Customer Service
Customer service comes in handy when something goes wrong. You hope you never have to use them, but if you do, you want to make sure they are responsive and fast at fixing problems. Find a host that is available 24/7
Price
Many musicians, especially those in the “undiscovered category,” probably don’t have tons of extra cash laying around. You can get decent hosting for $5 or less a month, but you might experience slower speeds. You may even want to go with the cheapest web hosting you can find.
Make sure to evaluate the cost before committing, because often you have to pay for the service upfront. You want to pick a good one, so you aren’t stuck in a bad contract and wasting your money.
Top Hosting Recommendations for Musicians
If you have budget constraints, check out the different offers for the best cheap web hosting.
