WordPress.com Launches WordPress Music
WordPress.com recently launched WordPress Music, a subsite that brings together all the WordPress.com tools for musicians in one spot including two new features, Playlists and Upcoming Events. It's a smart marketing move by WordPress and offers a strong argument for why you might want to start your WordPress experience at WordPress.com instead of taking a more complicated route via WordPress.org.
Since the use of the brand name WordPress for both WordPress.com and WordPress.org is an ongoing source of confusion, I should note that WordPress.com is the hosted version that is similar to but not as open-ended as the downloadable version, WordPress.org, for which you need to find your own host. Most of the news you see featuring WordPress is about WordPress.org.
Xzibit.com Hosted at WordPress.com Using Custom Domain
Last week WordPress.com announced the launch of WordPress Music as a way to draw attention to their usefulness for musicians. According to the announcement, such features include:
- Mobile-friendly, HTML5-based playlists (Extra Storage upgrade required)
- Upcoming Events widget and shortcode
- Social media cross-posting to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and more
- Embed music from SoundCloud or Bandcamp
- Videos embeds via YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, and more
- Show off your photos with tiled galleries
- Plus, turn it up to 11 with WordPress.com upgrades like Custom Domain and Custom Design
In addition, WordPress.com offers a variety of both free and premium themes.
Though basic WordPress.com blogs are free, many of the above features require premium upgrades via the WordPress.com Store.
Related News from the WordPress.com Blog:
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/App.net) blogs about music crowdfunding at Crowdfunding For Musicians (@CrowdfundingM). To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
Personally, I don’t find the WordPress.org route complicated at all. 😉
Good for you, bro. I’ve been watching WordPress.org sites go down due to SQL injections for years now. Just saw a guy with six music industry sites go down all at once.
It was avoidable but it’s just one example of people having problems with WordPress.
I had different problems but I saw enough to see what the average human would encounter. The kind of people that have problems with simpler systems and that’s who I’m addressing.
As soon as someone starts having to explain how to set up a server or choose a good web host it’s all over for most musicians.
But, again, I’m happy for you son.
given that wordpress is open source, is this a feature that CAN be rolled on to a wordpress.org custom site?
This isn’t one feature but a highlighting of features. Since, as I understand it, the development teams are separate, these features couldn’t simply be transferred over.
That said, there are probably WordPress.org equivalents for a lot, if not all, of these features in the form of plugins by third party developments.
Of course, part of the appeal of WordPress.org is all the other plugins and themes that are available that one can’t get at WordPress.com.
In addition, all those plugins and free themes include some that are security problems and that’s where WordPress.org runs into difficulties for folks that are learning things bit by bit as they go.
Check this out:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/08/automattic-launches-jetpack-2-0-for-self-hosted-wordpress-sites-includes-free-image-offloading-to-wp-com-infinite-scroll-more/
I reckon it could be added into the next Jetpack plugin pack for .org accounts.
There’s just been a big update for that, but with WordPress 3.5 just around the corner there’s a strong possibility.
I’d signed up to WordPress for my band before the days of WordPress For Music so we could use it for blogging and the like. WordPress doesn’t let you delete blogs though – do you know if it’s possible to convert your profile to music profile?
It may well be that you can implement all music features into an older site but I’m not too great with WP.
Assuming you mean WordPress.com, you can search help for delete blogs and they have the info:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/delete-site/
The features above should have been rolled out to everybody. I’d suggest starting in the help section with the name of the feature you wanted added and see where that takes you.
Musicians! If you are looking for a good WordPress Audio player try http://WordpressAudio.com. It’s easy to setup and works in all browsers including iPhone and Android.