A lot of musicians are moving so fast trying to get their songs together and recorded, make it out to gigs and keeping up with regularly posting on their social media accounts that they may be sleeping on making their strategy for music sales and website monetization.
With everyone content to live inside the confines of corporate owned social spaces, It’s easy to neglect carving out some space on the web that is your own. But if you have music, and you have merchandise, and you have a calendar of events, it really does make a lot of sense to create your own web page, if for no other reason then to be able to sell your own music directly without having to to pay all sorts of fees and splits to anyone else.
Why Wouldn’t You
Sure I get it those social media pages are so easy and you barely have to think, plus your digital distribution agreement has your music on iTunes Spotify Amazon and Pandora already so why would you worry about all of the extra work.
I get the argument though… with so many people on those commercial music sales platforms why do you want to worry about music sales and website monetization.
The answer is: Why not have both! That way you can be sure you’re not leaving money on the table. That makes sense to me.
Your Website
Your engaged fans are your true fans. They want to follow closely. There is no more clear and close access to an artist than through an artists very own official webpage. On the webpage you can keep all kinds of updates. You can include exclusive media clips to give your fans an interesting experience on your site.
You should also include all of your Music and samples to listen to on the page. Make sure your site is intuitive and clear. Make sure that you have “Buy” buttons from the music page. This will help your guests to quickly navigate from having sampled a song to the checkout. That will help ensure they’ve made their purchase easily. When they walk away with a digital copy of your music they will be pleased. Not only did they support your artistic efforts but they did so directly from your site.
Setup Your Website
To do music sales and website monetization well you first need a website. So register a domain name. In addition to registering a domain name there are some costs. There is a cost for registration and their is a cost to for hosting your site. The cost for hosting will be dependent on the amount of bandwidth needed.
Typically when you are first starting out, a smaller amount of bandwidth should be enough. If you are going to share videos on your website post them first on your Youtube Channel and embed them on your own site. That will save you a little bit of usage there. Eventually if the traffic to your website increases you will get forced to order a more expensive package, but that is probably a good problem to have.
In addition to setting up your own name you should also look into registering your artist name. Especially if that is the name with which you are going to be doing business as. Now, I am not a lawyer and do not offer legal advice, I do offer you common sense suggestions. Here is an article about where to start registering your artist name. Bookmark and Save it!
Templates Or In The Box Website Builders
There are two ways artists typically set up their account. They will either use WordPress, and some sort of template to build their page or they will join a service like those provided on Squarespace or WiX.
Putting your site on WordPress, is cheaper and less intuitive than a service. A service like Squarespace or Wix offer a subscription that covers your domain registration, your hosting, your storefront as well as a very easy to use website builder where everything is drag and drop and intuitive. It will cost 20 something dollars per month.
WordPress and hosting subscription will be significantly cheaper to set up but you are not going to have it as easy as the website builder on the other services. Also WordPress does not have a designated store, but there is a plug in called WOO Commerce that you can install into your website which provides the storefront.
Digital And Physical Sales
On your website you can sell music in all forms. You can sell singles EP and albums so if you are regularly making music your collection of items available to sell will only grow. In order to appeal to everyone It might be a very good idea to have both Digital and Physical Sales available on your website.
Don’t forget selling your Music as NFTs and selling them through your website. Make money where you can, and never leave money on the table. Here is a link to an article that will get you started. With Monetizing your music through NFTs. Check it out!
While it is so common these days for music to be sold or streamed digitally, there are still fans out there that may prefer having a tangible good in their hand. A lot of people prefer to listen to music on Vinyl and if you can offer that to them as well then that is great.
In a promotional sense you may have signed copies of albums or bundles available packaged with other merchandise. These are two examples of how you might be able to do some thing special with physical items to sale.
Merchandise
If you are serious about getting your website together, we have a great guide to share with you. It is a starting point into print on-demand merchandise. Essentially you can set up a company to print on-demand merchandise for you that can be sold through your website. Here is the link!
For a lot of people who want to avoid buying a lot of stock there are companies out there that do provide drop ship orders of albums. If you are still interested in more info about Drop Shipping, we have you covered with this guide. Bookmark as a resource!
So if you don’t want to invest in having some printed in advance or if you don’t want to involve yourself in shipping, you could source out one of these drop shipment alternatives and still be able to provide some of your fans with the physical formats that they are looking for.
Donation Widget
Lastly, don’t forget a donation widget. Maybe you don’t want to charge for your music. You may rather have your fans be able to take your songs freely and donate what they like. Perhaps you do charge for your songs and you want to allow for donations as well. This is the future; and the future is the Wild West, so do what you must.
Music sales and website monetization are like a garden you have to grow. That includes donations. Don’t think of them as a grift on your fans with no money either. While some of your fans my be light in the pocket others may not. The donation link doesn’t need to be intended for those who haven’t to support. It can be for those who do and like the sense they get in a patronage kind of way.
Lastly
That’s a wrap. We’ve discussed the ins and outs of music website monetization. Now, that you’re full of knowledge, dive into what needs done.
Keep yourself calm and relaxed and think of this all as a science experiment of sorts. You try something and measure the result. When you start to see things that work you can double down.
As always consistency and persistence will win the day so manage your enthusiasm and be consistent.
Good luck with your project!