Best Of 2013: 7 Steps to Creating a Perfect Music Page for Your Website
When it comes to having music on your website, installing a site-wide music player or embedding a player on your Homepage just isn’t enough. Remember, your website is your main hub on the Internet. If there’s any place that fans should be able to find all of your music, lyrics, and some free downloads, it’s on your own website.
Create a dedicated Music page as part of the main menu on your site, then follow these 7 steps to give fans a great experience, plus collect emails and generate sales in the process:
1. Have a PLAY button
It sounds obvious, but we still come across band websites where there isn’t a single play button. Don’t simply post the image of your album cover with a purchase link. Let your fans preview all of your songs, including at least 2-3 full songs. Your website isn’t the iTunes store, give fans something more than they would get anywhere else.
2. Offer Free Digital Downloads
Speaking of giving more to your fans through your website, offer a free downloadable song on your Music page. Even better than that, offer free songs in exchange for their email address. Getting a fan’s email is worth much more than getting $0.99 for a song download. That way you can keep in touch with them over the long term to let them know about upcoming shows, new music, new merch, etc.
3. Have Digital Downloads for Sale
Don’t simply send fans away to iTunes to buy your music. You should have ecommerce setup on your own site where you can offer digital downloads for sale. This way you get to keep the majority of the money, plus collect their email addresses (shameless plug: with Bandzoogle’s Album feature, you can offer downloads for free, pay-what-you-want, or set the price, and you keep 100% of any sales).
4. Have Physical Option(s)
Don’t believe the hype, there is still a demand for physical merch. Pledgemusic revealed that 82% of the pledges are going to physical product. So besides digital music, you should also offer physical options for your albums.
Signed CDs and special edition vinyls are great for your super fans who want a little something more. (shameless plug #2: with Bandzoogle's Store feature, you can offer physical merch for sale, and again, keep 100% of the sales, $10 million and counting).
5. Include Lyrics
Did you know that people search for “lyrics” just as much as “sex” on Google? With digital downloads and streaming, gone are the album/CD jackets with lyrics, but clearly fans still want to see the lyrics somewhere. So on your Music page, be sure to also include lyrics for your songs.
Another option is to create a “Lyrics” submenu page for your Music section and post all of your lyrics there. Just make sure that fans can find them on your website.
6. Add Album Info & Description
Another important element to add to your music page is info about the albums/songs. When/where was it recorded? With who? What was the inspiration behind the creation of the album? How was the experience? Why are you excited about it? Give your fans some context, let them read the story about your music while they’re listening to it, it might help inspire them to buy it.
7. Offer Other Purchase Options
Although you should emphasize selling music through your own website, some people simply prefer to buy through stores that they’re familiar with. So at the bottom of your Music page, include links to stores like iTunes and Amazon, but don’t bring more attention to them than that.
Some artists have large calls-to-action sending people directly to iTunes to buy their music, but again, your focus should be on selling directly to your fans and getting most of the money, and more importantly, collecting email addresses to stay in touch with those fans.
Hypebot contributing writer Dave Cool is Director of Artist Relations for musician website & marketing platform Bandzoogle. Twitter: @Bandzoogle | @dave_cool
