Publicity is extremely important. You need to share your music, talents and build an audience. You can’t do any of that without owning your platform. We all know that a lot of artists like to use soundcloud or maybe even Youtube. That is great, but at the end of the day you need to have something that you own and can control 100%.
This is a guide to doing just that. We’re gonna cover 4 simple steps to cover how to build your own website without breaking the bank and driving you crazy.
Hosting for Free or Paying For It?
When it comes to web hosting there are a lot of choices. Finding a host for musicians isn’t that challenging of a process. It’s gotten easier and easier to find a quality host that can make setting up your own website pretty darn easy.
There are a few choices here…
Free Hosting – Free hosts like wordpress or tumblr allow you to setup your own blog and link/share content on that. It’s a great option for someone starting out but again at the end of the day the major issue with that is you don’t own that specific URL. You’ll basically be borrowing it from that company.
Paid Hosting – This is where it can get complicated. You can pay $3 dollars a month for web hosting or pay even more than that. It’s simple and you need to find one that actually cares about it’s customers.
How to Build Your Website
I suggest using a free website themes that have been specifically designed and built for artists. There are plenty of themes for musicians that can be helpful, here are a few. Using one of these themes means that you can a quick design start and not have to worry too much about all the nitty gritty of design.
Hiring a designer can be really expensive and with a good theme you get design work at a fraction of the price.
How to Host Your Music
Luckily, most websites can intergrate well with Soundcloud or other media companies like Youtube. This allows you to keep everything in one place and stream your music pretty quickly and effectively. Highly recommended for anyone who doesn’t want to pay extra fees for hosting their tunes.
You can also pay for other services which look to find hosts close to you to increase the speed of streaming, but I suggest using an integrated Youtube or Soundcloud feature. It’s a lot easier and way less hassle.
Facebook Advertising
While it might seem a bit complicated, I suggest that any artist who is serious about his/her brand pay for either Facebook advertising or Youtube advertising. It’s pretty simple and all you need to do is do a couple hours of reading online to figure out how to use FB advertising and get your online ad game on point.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day owning your own platform is the key to success. You’ll want to control your traffic so that you can offer them free downloads, upgrades or even get them hyped up for your next big release.
That’s it and all!