Without question, social media has become a very important marketing tool for musicians and creators alike. It can be used to grow your audience and make sales. However, social media can not replace the importance of a personal website as a musician.
Below are 5 Reasons Why Musicians Need Websites:
1. Social Media Sites Come and Go
As already stated in this article, we can’t not acknowledge how powerful and useful social media is to a musician as it helps you get closer to your fans and followers. Social media, however, may not always be a constant in an artist’s journey. A lot of artists made social media sites like MySpace and Facebook their major focus as a way to build a following and connect with their fans. After those sites became unpopular or ‘uncool’, some artists struggled to build new fanbases from scratch on new social media sites like Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. It’d be best to invest in your own website. With your own website, you will have the power to control how long it should stay up and this brings us to our next point.
2. You Own It and Have Total Control
You are in full control of your own customized domain name. As long as you keep renewing your domain, you have full right to display what you want so far as it doesn’t go against the Cyberlaw. Your fate is not left in the hands of some company in Silicon Valley. You will no longer have to worry if your content is getting lost in the shuffle with another musician’s Ad or post. You also get to control your brand image and message. There is no limitation on how you’d like to convey a message to your fans. All the content you publish will be available until you no longer want it to be public.
3. You Look Like A Professional
In a day, we at Unorthodox Reviews, get tons of song submission emails from musicians all over the world. There are a few things we always look out for in our mail submissions: We check if the musician has an Electronic Press kit (EPK) or a good looking website, a substantial social media following with engaging content, a well-written press release, high quality photos and then lastly, we check how good your song is. Venue bookers, festivals, promoters, bloggers and music journalists like to work with people who would bring value to them or at least appear to. They’ll expect to find you at yourartistname.com when they run a google search. With that, they get a one-stop destination to your music and associated social media platforms.
4. People want a one-stop destination
With a website, anyone, be it fans or industry professionals, can get a quick overview of what a musician is all about. You can read a biography on the musician, get access to links to all social media platforms, links to the digital streaming platforms and stores the musician is on and it is also the best way to sign up for their mailing lists.
5. You own your mailing list
Every good musician website or any website owned by a digital creator should have a ‘Newsletter Sign Up‘ feature. With social media, the owners are the ones privy to such information but having your own website can help you get a list of emails from fans who actually have an interest in what you are doing. It’s really sad how musicians and creators spent so many years building a following on platforms like Facebook only to find out they had to pay for ads in order to reach their own fans.
Having a list of fan email addresses is a very valuable asset. You get to always communicate and keep in touch with your fans, sell your music or merch regardless of which social networks they might be on. It has been proven that email marketing is 40 times as effective as Facebook and Twitter.
A website for some may be a bold step in the journey of being a musician and are waiting to get more content before getting one. Others may delay in getting one because they aren’t ready to commit to paying an annual or monthly fee for their domain and hosting. I wouldn’t recommend rushing the process of getting one but hopefully, this article can help you narrow down the pros and cons of having a website as an artist.
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