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You are reading a 1-page tutorial on how to affordably design, build and maintain
a website for selling your music. Serious artists have their own domain name and
website in addition to pages on networking sites such as MySpace.
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QUICK LINKS
WEBSITE HOSTING
This ad is for the hosting service we use. Excellent customer support!
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DOMAIN NAMES
We purchase our domain names from GoDaddy.com. They also have very good
hosting packages and other services.
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ELECTRONICS
We've purchased a lot of computer hardware from NewEgg.com - very good prices and excellent reputation.
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MARKETING BOOKS
There are some excellent books at Amazon.com on building your online music business. Contact us for recommended books.
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Creating Music Websites
Welcome to Blog's tutorial on digital marketing for Musicians. In this resource, we show musicians how
to use online promotional tools to increase music sales and increase attendance at live performances. Digital Marketing refers to
promotion, branding, and music sales through people's computers and the Internet. These techniques are the fundamentals for
cost-effective marketing that reinforce the physical marketing methods musicians use. The following sections will quickly help
you understand and implement the most important steps for marketing over the Internet.
Select a domain name for your website
Find hosting for your web pages
Create web pages
Launch your website
A website is a set of interconnected files (filled with graphics, text, media, etc.) that reside on a computer server with a designated address. This address
is called a URL (uniform resource locater) which other people can use to view the files through an Internet connection on a computer. BlogYourMusic.com
is an example of an IP address or domain name. Now let's go over the basics of how you can create and manage your own website. (and do so on a budget!)
Select a Domain Name
Domain names that end in ".com" can be purchased for less than $10/year. ".com" was originally meant to distinguish commercial business websites but has
become the assumed extension. Domain names should be the artist name or band name. Funny or cute domain names or choosing an extension besides .com
make it difficult for someone to find your website. Search for the domain name and extension you want. Often adding "music" or "band" can help you secure a .com domain name containing the artist or
band name.
We purchased our domain name (BlogYourMusic.com) from GoDaddy.com. They have
low prices, good support and a simple interface for managing your domain. Purchase the domain for at least 2 years as you may be penalized by search
engines if you only purchase 1 year. If you are considering purchasing extra services, give us a call and we'll help figure out if they are for you.
Once your domain is setup you will need to "point" your domain at the server where your files are being stored. Server information comes
from your Hosting Provider.
Choose a Hosting Provider
The domain name is your unique address for your web pages. Now you need a place to store those web pages. A hosting company has a
bunch of computer servers and will charge you monthly for a certain amount of space and bandwidth. They will give you the names of the server for
you to "point" your domain to. We use
Brinkster because they are affordable, use Windows servers, and have excellent live chat support. There are A LOT of hosting companies out there and
we've found out the hard way that not all of them are good. Here's what separates hosting companies:- Space: the amount of data you can upload to your website. 1 gigabyte (1 GB = 1,000 MB) is a lot of space and
you should be able to get that for less than $10/month.
- Bandwidth: the amount of data that can be downloaded from your website during a month. If
someone views 4 web pages (50 kB each) which has 8 pictures (100 kB each) then that person downloaded 1 MB (4 x 50kB + 8 x 100kB). If that person also
downloads a 5.5 MB MP3 the bandwidth required jumps to 6.5 MB total. If you have 10 GB of bandwidth you can have 1,538 people download that much data per
month. Otherwise you will have to pay a hefty fee per extra MB of bandwidth needed.
- Server: the type of operating system the server uses.
Most servers use Linux which is an open-source (read: free) operating system. You can serve HTML, java, php and other types of web pages on Linux servers.
Web pages written in asp or aspx require Windows servers because they use a language developed by Microsoft. Make sure the hosting you purchase works with
your web pages.
- Price: the monthly charge often paid in 1 year increments. Hosting has become a commodity so make sure you understand why you would pay more than $5/month.
- Service:
how well do they help you when you have questions? Live help hours, online tutorials, email support response-time, website uptime, and so on are things
that you want to get a feel for before signing up.
Create Web Pages
Before starting to create your web pages plan things out. One of the best ways is to draft the following:
- Graphical sketch: shows the layout of a page including location of
menus, logos, sections for text, pictures and other non-text elements you want to incorporate.
- Page Content: document with the text you
want in each text section for each web page.
- Hierarchy Chart: an org chart for your website showing which web pages are linked together.
When designing your website keep in mind that you want people to buy your music and come to your gigs. Thus, make sure your website is easy to read, breaks up
text into small doses, uses appropriately-named menu items, and does not contain "broken links" (ones that don't work) or offensive text or pictures. Standard
sections of musician websites are: bio, pictures, news, gigs, music and store.
On your store page you should display all of your CDs and merchandise. Most importantly,
you should be able to take online orders 24/7! See www.MyTexasOnlineMusic.com for our
recommendation for a Texas-based online CD store. If you are a member of Blog Your Music then you can also list all of your songs with a note telling
people they can buy individual songs by clicking on them. Alternatively, link to your dedicated page at www.BlogYourMusic.com/artistname. We provide you with all
the HTML code and instructions on our Artist Resources page.
Your "music" page should allow visitors to your website to listen to your music. In our opinion, it is a
mistake to allow your website visitors to play your full-length songs an unlimited number of times. Why? Remember, your website is to aid you in
selling music and getting people at your gigs. Streaming music players are cool but let people listen to your music until they are tired of it. MP3 downloads
let people burn your songs to CD, put them on their MP3 players and, worst of all, distribute them. Use free 30-45 second music samples to lead people to purchasing
your music. Here's how...
If you are a member of Blog Your Music then you have "Weed" files at your disposal. These files can be played
3 times for free - full-length & high-quality - before the person is prompted to purchase the file in order to continue listening to it or transfer it to
an MP3 player or burn it to CD. Replace your full-length MP3s and streaming songs with these and you will lead people to a decision on whether
to purchase or not. Give it a try. You will find that fans are more than happy to buy a song or two from you!
A clear understanding of what your pages will look like, what they will say and how they will connect will save you quite a bit of time. There are basically 3 ways
to create your web pages:- Design It Yourself: There are plenty of website design books
 and websites. This
approach costs very little but requires more time. You may enjoy learning about web pages and expressing your creativity so don't be afraid to try it! - Website Template:
Many hosting companies offer a free website builder as part of their hosting packages and
you can also download free website templates. If you are familar with HTML code then
you can grab pieces of code or graphics from these templates and use them in a site you are designing. If you see a website you like you can select "View"
from the main menu and then "Source" in order to view the HTML code.
- Professionally Designed: Many online services will design a logo and/or
website for you for a wide range of prices. The best way to get your money's worth is to ask around for a referral. Here's the contact information for
Don Roach - a web-designer in Austin, TX - who has helped us with website design, logos and print materials. You can view Don's website or contact him at docroach73@yahoo.com.
Here are some other useful resources and tools for creating your website:
Launch Your Website
Typically you will purchase your domain name and hosting before you have completed your website. You will have a default page (index.html, index.asp, default.htm, etc.)
that will be displayed when someone goes to your website. Put some quick HTML on this page so that people know you are working on it and how they can contact you. With
a landing page up you can then upload and test your pages without people visiting them. On the day you launch your website, delete your temporary home
page and your new home page will then become the default landing page.
Use an FTP client to upload all of your pages and graphics. Ace FTP Freeware is what we use. It's great and free! Your hosting company will provide the settings to connect your FTP client to
your website server space. You may also be able to upload files through a web interface provided by your hosting company. You will also want to setup at
least one email account. A "catch-all" email will redirect all email sent to your domain (including spam) to you. Outlook or Outlook Express will download
your website email just by setting up a POP3 email account through the Tools menu.
Your website is a passive
promotion tool as people have to choose to go there. If you have not done so please review our Search Engine Optimization tutorial designed
to help musicians increase passive traffic to their website. Now it is time to utilize an active promotion tool: email
campaigns. Afterall, a great website won't do you any good if no one visits it!
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