Why your band needs a professional website
In June of 2022, I picked my friend Tim up from Denver International Airport and set out to Telluride for the 49th Annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
Tim and I met in college and bonded over our love for live music. After college, Tim moved to Nashville and started managing an up-and-coming bluegrass band named Sicard Hollow.
On our windy ride to Telluride, Tim filled me in on how management was going and mentioned that the band was about to go on tour and release a new album.
Wanting to see what towns the boys were hitting on their upcoming tour, I pulled up the band’s website on my phone while we stopped for lunch.
My first impression was that it looked like a standard band website… stale, and unprofessional. It felt like every other basic website built on a self-service website builder like Wix or Squarespace.
The basic elements were there -- album art, links to their social accounts, streaming links, photos, videos -- but it felt disconnected from the Sicard Hollow vibe I was familiar with.
First impressions are important. And for bands, a positive first impression can be the difference between someone becoming a life-long fan or forgetting about you. This is the foundation for why your band needs a professional website.
- It conveys your credibility as a band to both promoters and fans alike
- It makes it easier for new fans to discover and meaningfully connect with you.
- It enables you to book higher-quality, higher-paying gigs
- It reduces friction for the press to write about you
- It brings more people to your shows
- It compliments your band's in-person brand
Your band needs a professionally-built, thoughtfully-designed, and beautifully-curated website to enable fans and promotors to seemlessly immerse themselves in your music and brand.
I'm not dissing them for their old website-- they're musicians, not software engineers or web designers. They used the tools that were available to them, and they put something out (which is better than not putting anything out at all!). You have to start somewhere.
So after Telluride, Tim agreed to let me redesign and build a website for Sicard Hollow to coincide with the release of their new album, Brightest of Days. I researched websites for other artists and bands, making note of things that worked well and caught my attention. I even looked at some technology and software company websites for inspiration.
After a successful launch, the old experience of directing their fans to random websites like Spotify, AXS, and YouTube was over. The band started linking their fans to their new website as a destination for every action they want or need to take; a single place where fans can explore tour dates, music library, news, ticket purchases and more.
- You can leverage your website to immerse fans in your entire brand, not just your music.
- You control how your fans interact with your brand, content, and music.
- Your fans build a stronger connection to your band.
Sicard Hollow’s website launch was a massive success, and since then I’ve been working with several other bands I love, including Airshow and Arkansauce. I’ve continued to develop these new ideas and experiences for them.
In addition to building out more websites for bands, I am focusing this quarter on launching a platform that ties into their websites and provides a premium solution for them to archive their work, particularly their live shows. This will give more opportunities for fans to dig into their music.
Stay tuned!