Why have a traditional website?

[markjsmith]

SOME people need to see a site, it makes you look more professional. If you are gonna get hired for a composing gig, say by a company that doesn't deal with composers often they will most likely want to see a site so they can see you are legit. This doesn't happen all that often, but I know of at least 3 composers who have sealed corporate deals because they have a great site.

[markjsmith]

And yes DI you are popular, kinda like the black plague!

[DesireInspires]

PS. I'm keeping my website, although it is fairly useless. But everyone once in a blue moon someone does contact me through it.

You should definitely keep your website. A website is a personal endeavor, just like music itself. I do not think that a website is financially beneficial for most musicians. But a website is a good way to display one's art.

[Casey H]

Back to the original idea of this thread...

Obviously, the MINIMUM you need is someplace to direct potential users to so they can sample your music. Some libraries will use a website link for initial screening of your material. And, a little bit about you, credits, etc. are valuable, especially if you have placement credits.

Can you get away with a simple Soundcloud page showing bio and songs? Probably. But your own domain and more customized page (usually from templates) doesn't cost much these days and adds more cred. Hostbaby specializes in music artist websites and offers lots of templates and tools... $20/month if I recall.

From what I've read, end users such as music sups want the something simple that allows them to read a BREIF bio and play tracks. The easier it is to get to the play tracks function the better. Nothing worse than visiting a site and having trouble figuring out how to play the music.

Casey

[ShadowaterMusic]

Another good thread destroyed by Desire.

The blame doesn't seem to lie with him this time. Some posters seem to miss his old style and are trying their best to coax it back out of him.

Hostbaby specializes in music artist websites and offers lots of templates and tools... $20/month if I recall.

I'm not sure one way or the other if Hostbaby's premium features are worth the premium, but with a company like Bluehost, you can get full web hosting, along with templates, easy Wordpress installs, mysql DBs, etc. for $5/month.

[Casey H]

You should definitely keep your website. A website is a personal endeavor, just like music itself. I do not think that a website is financially beneficial for most musicians. But a website is a good way to display one's art.

Websites can sometimes be one of those "hard to quantify" things whereby it's hard to measure in financial terms. I don't see this as art vs. business at all. It's very much businesss... From a business perpective, there are things we do-- business cards, websites, conferences, etc whereby you can't always measure the benefit of presenting yourself as a pro, though you know it's there.

Casey

[kclements]

Thanks for the comments. And maybe this is a silly topic. If you have a site, keep it, update it once in a while and be done with it. I just thought it might make an interesting discussion. Some more of my thoughts (or just skip to the bottom

I'm not saying you don't need a web presence and I would certainly keep my domain name. I wouldn't want to contact a library with a @gmail or @yahoo account. I think it looks more professional to have a custom domain name.

What I am asking (and not just for myself, but as a general question) is would you consider doing away with the Wordpress (or similar service, template, whatever) site, and all the maintenance that goes along with it. Even if you have to spend just 1 hour a month to make sure everything is up to date, is that too much when you are getting about 3-10 hits a week? Again, it's not about the cost in dollars. I pay $50 a year for my site with 10 email boxes, and it's a business expense at that. It's about the cost in attention and time spent dealing with possible headaches, updates and stuff.

Might you be better off having a general site, like the flavors.me site, transfer your custom domain so that it serves up that page and know it is automatically updated every time you post a track to soundcloud? If you send a contact to it, it is clear where they can click to listen - served by Soundcloud including any sets and playlists you have. Theres a clear page for bio. Clean, easy, very little maintenance and the service keeps everything (system-wise) up to date.

I used to design web sites for clients, and enjoyed playing around with the latest widgets and templates and lookie-that's. Now I am more interested in playing in Logic and writing songs.

Maybe I should have said at the beginning, I hoped this to be more of an open discussion - and not necessarily what you think I should do with my site.

Thanks again for the discussion.

kc

[michael11]

Thanks for the comments. And maybe this is a silly topic. If you have a site, keep it, update it once in a while and be done with it. I just thought it might make an interesting discussion. Some more of my thoughts (or just skip to the bottom

I'm not saying you don't need a web presence and I would certainly keep my domain name. I wouldn't want to contact a library with a @gmail or @yahoo account. I think it looks more professional to have a custom domain name.

What I am asking (and not just for myself, but as a general question) is would you consider doing away with the Wordpress (or similar service, template, whatever) site, and all the maintenance that goes along with it. Even if you have to spend just 1 hour a month to make sure everything is up to date, is that too much when you are getting about 3-10 hits a week? Again, it's not about the cost in dollars. I pay $50 a year for my site with 10 email boxes, and it's a business expense at that. It's about the cost in attention and time spent dealing with possible headaches, updates and stuff.

Might you be better off having a general site, like the flavors.me site, transfer your custom domain so that it serves up that page and know it is automatically updated every time you post a track to soundcloud? If you send a contact to it, it is clear where they can click to listen - served by Soundcloud including any sets and playlists you have. Theres a clear page for bio. Clean, easy, very little maintenance and the service keeps everything (system-wise) up to date.

I used to design web sites for clients, and enjoyed playing around with the latest widgets and templates and lookie-that's. Now I am more interested in playing in Logic and writing songs.

Maybe I should have said at the beginning, I hoped this to be more of an open discussion - and not necessarily what you think I should do with my site.

Thanks again for the discussion.

kc

Hi KC,

Don't let DI put you off.

It's a great topic and I am sure more people will get involved with some serious discussion.

I will keep my comments about DI to myself.

Please don't let DI stifle a wonderful board with tons of decent people on it.

All the best,


Mick.

[Casey H]

Most of what's on this thread is good discussion. It is not ruined. I agree that (myself included) responding to DI, other than directly on topic was the problem. I deleted one post I made.

No reason we can't continue to talk about artist/composer website issues.

And BTW, my website probably needs an overhaul and a facelift. I made it from a hostbaby template a few years ago, and other than adding songs and some minor bio tweaks, haven't changed it. I've been lazy about seeing what new tools are available to make it better including improvements in various players, widgets, etc. It's www.caseysongs.com ...

I tend to use RN for single song links when I need one.

Casey

[pedrocosta]

IMO a website does have value.
It's a place where you can organize/customize items that are unique about yourself and your music.
About, Bio, Contact info, Music, Licensing info, Credits, etc.
You can use Soundcloud to host your files, organize them into sets, and embed sets on the site.
- For sales, bandcamp is a good option.
- For social media, Facebook page and Twitter.
Have everything linked into your website as well. As with tagging of tracks, tag your website pages. If you use a CMS as the engine for your site you can easily tag pages, articles, blog entries, etc. It all helps with search engine results.

That being said, my own site needs a overhaul. Slowly chipping away at it.