Do you want to learn how to sell music online? While you may have come across dedicated services like Bandcamp, it’s also easier than ever to sell music through your own website.
By setting up your own website, you can not only sell music on online, but also have space for a list of your upcoming shows, information about your band, a merchandise store, and much more.
Why Using WordPress is a Great Way to Sell Music Online
As a musician, there are several ways you can get noticed and build your audience online. This includes social media, of course, as well as dedicated platforms like iTunes, SoundCloud, and NoiseTrade, to name a select few.
However, it’s also crucial to maintain a website for yourself or your band. This will serve as your home base, giving you a place to share information, offer samples of your music, and help fans and potential collaborators get in touch. Also, selling your music through your own website gives you control over the process and you won’t have to share the profits with a middleman, music stores or any other subsidiaries.
When it comes to building a website, you have many options. However, for most situations, WordPress offers the best combination of ease of use and flexibility:
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WordPress offers a number of key advantages. For example:
- The WordPress software is free, although you’ll need to spend a bit on your own domain name and hosting.
- It’s easy to learn and beginner-friendly. , which will help you set up your website quickly.
- It’s easy to change the look and feel of your site to find a layout that suits your band.
- There are plenty of plugins -ons that you can install on your site, helping you customize it to meet your exact needs.
We’ll introduce you to several of those tools later. For now, what matters is that WordPress is simple to get started and infinitely flexible.
A Musician’s Website Essentials
Before putting together your new website, it’s important to take some time to plan. While your site doesn’t need to be huge or complex, there are a few elements you’ll want to make sure it contains.
While each case is unique, most music-focused websites should include (at a minimum ):
- Information about you and/or your band, along with lots of pictures and personal biographies
- A contact form or page, so people can get in touch
- Samples of your music that visitors can listen to
- A list or schedule of upcoming appearances, tours, or other performances
- A storefront where people can purchase your work, either in physical or digital format (or both)
- Links to your other web presences, such as your social media pages
This may seem like a lot, but most of these items are pretty easy to set up. Let’s take a look at how you can sell music online through your WordPress website.
How to Sell Music Online: A DIY Musician’s Guide to Using WordPress
In this period, it’s time to learn how to sell music online. We’ll walk you through the four most important steps, starting with the basics.
- Step 1: Buy a domain name and hosting
- Step 2: Choose a theme for your site
- Step 3: Set up your music store
- Step 4: Install additional plugins as needed
Step 1: Purchase a domain name and hosting
There are two things you will need to get your website online. The first is a domain name and the second is a hosting plan. Your domain name is the main URL for your site and can be purchased from any domain registrar on the web (including most hosting providers).
As a musician, you’ll want to use your own name. , or the name of your band or group. If the domain is busy, try adding an extra word or two, like johndoemusic.com or johndoeonline.com:
Hosting is the engine that powers your site. When you’re just starting out, you should be fine with a basic shared hosting plan. They can be found for $5 or less per month and will offer a lot of power for a long time.
For example, Bluehost has plans starting as low as $2.75 per month and even offers a free domain name to boot. .
As your site grows, you can upgrade to plans with better performance and more space. Just make sure you choose your hosting provider carefully, as some are more reliable than others. Additionally, you’ll want to consider signing up for a plan that offers WordPress-specific features and optimization.
With your domain and hosting in place, you can go ahead and set up the website itself.How you do this will vary, but many hosting providers provide simple one-click options for WordPress, or even offer plans with the platform pre-installed. If you need to manually install WordPress, don’t worry, it’s a simple five-minute process.
Step 2: Choose a theme for your site
You now have a basic WordPress site at functioning. The next step in learning how to sell music online is to give your site the right look. This means installing a theme, a WordPress plugin that completely overhauls the design and appearance of your site.
There are thousands of themes to choose from. You can find many for free in the WordPress theme directory, including our main theme, Neve, which has a visually appealing pre-built site designed specifically for music bands.
If that aspect doesn’t, however, it appeals to you for some reason and you don’t want to spend time editing it, feel free to explore other options. Just be sure to pay attention to the ratings and reviews.
While you can choose any WordPress theme for your music site, you may want to consider looking for one specific to your niche within the music industry. . There are plenty of music-focused themes to choose from, offering layouts and features that are perfectly suited to the type of site you’re building. You can even find options tailored to your particular music genre or style:
Of course, once you’ve installed a theme, you can tweak it to better suit your needs. This means replacing the stock images with your own brand, and typically changing the layout, colors, and fonts. The WordPress Customizer will make this an easy task.
Step 3: Set Up Your Music Store
With your theme in place, it’s easy to start setting up the key pages that You will need (such as a contact page and an events list). We’re talking about how to sell music online though, which means you’ll need some form of storefront.
WordPress doesn’t include eCommerce functionality by default, but you can easily add it via a plugin. Like themes, plugins are plugins that can be installed on your site. However, instead of focusing on images, the plugins provide new features and options.
There are many WordPress plugins to help you sell your music. WooCommerce, for example, is a popular and easy-to-use option:
This tool helps you set up a store in minutes and sell whatever you want. It’s also free, and you won’t have to pay any additional fees for transactions made on your site.
WooCommerce is a good choice if you’re looking to sell physical CDs and merchandise, or a mix of physical and digital items. If you just want to sell downloads of your music, Easy Digital Downloads is also worth a look:
This plugin is also free to use and even more optimized than WooCommerce. Its focus on digital sales means you won’t have to deal with a lot of unnecessary features. Plus, setting up your store and products with Easy Digital Downloads is a quick process.
Step 4: Install additional plugins as needed
So far, you’ve learned how to set up your WordPress site. and how to sell music online with it. This may be all you need, but you can also benefit from some additional features.
There are many plugins that can be useful on a musician’s website. Here are just a few options to get you started:
- 👉Sonaar Audio Player – This plugin gives you many options to embed audio players on your site, create playlists, and display specific tracks. illustrations.
- 👉 Podcasting Seriously Simple: Despite the name, this solution offers a range of media-related tools that work just as well for showcasing your music as they do for hosting podcasts.
- 👉 Events Manager – If you use your site to promote presentations, this tool will help you set up a schedule and even sell tickets.
With the right plugins, you can add almost any feature imaginable to your your WordPress music site.
Final Thoughts on Selling Music Online 🏁
To summarize, there are four main steps in learning how to sell music online:
Have questions about setting up and customizing your website? Let us know in the comments section below!
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