5 REASONS WHY MUSICIANS NEED (SMARTER) WEBSITES

Written by Omari MC

As evidenced by Facebook's changing algorithm, musicians have very little control over content being distributed to their audience on the platform.

You don't have that problem with a website. You own the hosting and domain and get to be as creative as you want with your design.

Of course we're still going to keep our Facebook pages as another place to interact with listeners and get more traffic over to our website (as some of you are probably reading this from a link I posted on social media).

We should use our social pages as a side attraction to the main deal (the website), but they are not sufficient in replacing it.

Having a website creates a far superior avenue for collecting email addresses.

If I did not have an email list, I would not be able to pay my bills with my site. It is that important. Twitter and Facebook are no substitutes for email.

The potential a musician can have with a good email list is limitless. Not just a list of email addresses in your Gmail account either. I'm talking about a professional service like MailChimp.

I always suggest more serious musicians get the premium version of Mailchimp because of the automation campaigns. This means email is working around the clock for you! It's less work and will undoubtedly make you more money than it will cost you if you know what you're doing.

You can even try the premium version of MailChimp free for 3 months if you sign up through my affiliate link: http://eepurl.com/7T9PX

Industry professionals like labels, managers and booking agents see a website (with a dedicated domain name, such as yourband.com) as a sign that you are committed and professional.

Getting a yourbandname.wix.com is not a professional address. It's a sub-domain. Investing in your craft in essential. I can't stress that enough. Getting a website is not some astronomical amount of money either. You can get a very professional one started for under $150.

I'm sure some people may not have $150 right now, but think of all of the other things you want to buy: shoes, going out to restaurants, clubbing, golf clubs, whatever! If a musician is not willing to start taking their career seriously, they will think of a million excuses. Don't make that mistake.

There are specials and bundles I offer through my site that would not be possible if I did not invest in my domain name and hosting.

Listeners like sales. Sometimes it gives people an excuse to invest in your music. You keep your profit margins higher by having your own site as well. If I sell my music on iTunes, someone is digging into my pockets because it's their platform.

And they should be! I'm not knocking iTunes for taking a percentage. I'm saying, if you can sell it through your site, why would you not?

Not to mention, I've sold hundreds and hundreds of copies of my book without even putting it on Amazon (they take a generous cut). I'm not saying I wouldn't eventually publish it on Amazon, but if it's doing fine with me keeping most of the money with no extra middle man, more power to it.

You've may have noticed there are ads on my site as well (extra revenue).

I also opened up promotions to help more music artists get heard. When you control the domain and hosting, you make the decisions without seeking excess outside approval.

Sites like Tunecore suggests that musicians should invest in websites to help their brands image.

How much would it suck to call yourself, ''Rapper X", get all excited about registering your domain name (e.g. www.rapperx.com), then find out that the domain was taken by someone else.

You protect your brand by investing in yourself and reserving your artist name as your website.

I'd urge artists ready to take their career seriously to start these steps if they already haven't. This is a run down version of all the complexity that can go into a site, but the point is an artist should be investing in one ASAP.

If that's you, here's a 25% off coupon from me to start your own website at Hostgator:

Click here to set up a website with Hostgator at 25% off.

At the very least, reserve your domain name (that's less than $12 usually).

Feel free to just go to Hostgator.com as well and enter the coupon code when prompted at checkout:

ACADEMYDISCOUNT is the code. It will also get you 25% off.