Make a Musician Website: Step by Step Guide

The Music Studio: Step 1: Make a Musician Website

Create a musician website: A requirement

The first step in starting a music studio should be with creating a website.

How do you make a musician website? It is relatively simple but can be very time-consuming and somewhat expensive.

I made my first piano studio website in 2011. I used a pre-made template that didn’t have a mobile version at the time. I filled in some basic information and added a photo of myself together with my five students. That was my whole piano studio website. This simple website helped me tremendously in building my piano studio after moving to a new location. Very few local music teachers had any meaningful online presence at the time.

On two separate occasions my website helped me find several new students at once.
A few years ago, a local teacher unexpectedly passed away. He had a large private studio, and his students suddenly were left without a teacher. They did a Google search for local piano teachers and found my website. I suddenly got several new students without having to do much.
A year later, another local piano teacher moved away. She found me through my website and referred her students to me. I had another influx of new students.
Each time, having even a simple musician website made it possible for others to find me (and me to make more money). My website was very simple, but it put me on the local google search. The prospective students were able to find me with a search on their computers or smartphones.
Today, the marketplace is much more competitive. Your website will likely have a lot of local competition. Potential students have several choices to pick from. Your website has to clearly define who you are and what you do. The fonts have to be easy to read, your navigation needs to be logical, your photos have to look great, and the clients have to be able to get in touch with you quickly.

How do you make a classical musician website?

If you google “make a musician website” or a similar search, you’ll find an overwhelming amount of information.
Basically, you have two choices – build the website yourself or hire a professional.

Build a musician website yourself

Most popular do-it-yourself choices are SquareSpace.com, Wix.com, and Bandzoogle.com.

The process seems to be simple enough – you subscribe to monthly hosting, purchase a domain, and pick a template.

After watching a few tutorials and fiddling with various options. you’ll start filling in the blanks. but soon you’ll realize that the website is not looking very professional. There are several common reasons for this:

• Your photos are not professional
• Photos are not sized correctly.
• Your content does not work with the layout of the page.
• You don’t have enough content and the pages look empty.

People often get overwhelmed with endless choices of colors and fonts. After playing with the website for a while you might be able to have your first page somewhat presentable. The real problems start when you switch to mobile view and suddenly realize that the photos look completely different and the text does not work.

Once you are done with the website building you might want to add a pop up window, payment options, and a subscription sign up. As a musician, you might think that you will never need any of those options. A few years ago, it was true, but the marketplace is changing rapidly and we all need to improve our online presence.

A pop-up window offers price discounts for your prospective students. At some point, you might decide to sell sheet music you’ve composed or maybe even coffee mugs with your studio’s name printed on them. That’s when the payment options come very handy. I never thought of myself as capable of composing music, but I have done a few simple arrangements of popular children’s songs, and written a Note Speller for beginners.

Even more complicated option is to build a website based on WordPress, the most popular platform in the world for website design. The design and functionality options are endless, but so are the difficulties.

Hire a professional to build a musician website for you

Your second choice is to hire a professional who will build a website for you. Expect to pay at least $500 for a simple website design. You will still need to select a hosting company and purchase a URL. You will also be responsible for writing all your content including your bio, teaching philosophy, basic description of lessons, etc. It is possible to hire a writer to do that as well, but prepare to pay a few hundred dollars more. With this option, you are looking closer to a $1,000 budget at a minimum to make your website look professional.

Even when you hire professionals, be prepared to be the decision maker about the content and layout of the website.
Depending on your hosting company you might need to perform maintenance and technical updates.

Here are the main steps on how to make a musician website.

WEBSITE HOST and DOMAIN

You need to pick a hosting company and a domain name. If you decide to use Wix.com, Squarespace.com, or a similar option, they provide web hosting. There are also plenty of hosting companies that don’t offer templates, but have a better monthly price.

Pick a well-known company which can provide a fast-responding website. Your website should load in around 2-3 seconds. I don’t think speed is a decisive factor for a music teacher’s website, but you don’t want to make your potential clients wait for over 5 seconds. They might just give up and move on to the next site.

You will also need to select a domain name (URL). This will be your online address so pick something people can remember easily and type into their browsers. For example – SmithPianoStudio.com or AllisonsFluteStudio.net. It’s helpful to make sure that your domain name actually tells people what you do. Google and Twitter might be nice for a tech startup, but for a regular small business, you need a name that makes it clear what business you’re in.

Be prepared that many “.com” options are already taken. It is really not a big deal. There are plenty of other options to pick from – .co, .online, .net, .music etc. There are literally hundreds of top-level domains (TLD) available.

How to Structure Your Musician Website

HOME PAGE

The home page is the most important page of your website! It must clearly and concisely indicate what you do and that you are great at it!

Two or three photos in professional settings and concise written content are very important. Nobody wants to read multiple paragraphs and browse many photos.

“According to the Nielsen Norman Group, viewers typically leave a website within 10 to 20 seconds,” From Chron.com. “According to Statisticbrain.com, eight seconds is the average person’s attention span and only 28 percent of words are read on an average Web page.”

The best pages have a lot of white space and are scannable. A visitor who knows nothing of your business should have an idea of what you do without having to “read” anything. Scanning headlines and looking at photos needs to tell them what they need to know.

Your page should also include clear ways to get in touch with you and start lessons. In web developer language that is called calls to action (CTAs), a.k.a. buttons. You should have a button in almost every section of your home page. Make it extremely easy for people to contact you.

If you have any student reviews available, place them on the top half of the page. Knowing how other students feel about your teaching skills is one of the best ways to convince new students.

ABOUT PAGE

The second most important page of your website is your “about” page.

You need to have a well written biography. It needs to talk about your experience, training, and skills as a musician and as a teacher.

It should only be 100 to 200 words long. Don’t write a novel. Make it so that it’s easy to understand and easy to read.

This is also the page to place more student reviews. If you don’t have student reviews, you can put recommendations from your teachers or performance reviews.

TEACHING/LESSONS PAGE

The lessons and teaching page should have the basic information about your teaching method, pricing, location, etc. Try to be as detailed as you can in order to avoid answering the same questions over and over.

I recommend writing the price to avoid students who are looking for a cheap deal. There are people who will debate this idea, saying you can sell people your services if they like you, even if it’s out of their price range. In my experience, people who are willing to pay more than they can afford are few and far between. Just make it easy for people to choose you (or eliminate you from their choices).

MEDIA PAGE

A media page is where you should post videos of you and/or your students playing. It’s okay if you only have a few videos. The easiest way to post a video on a website is to upload it first to YouTube and then place a link on your page. You can use YouTube or Vimeo’s embed function. It’s simple and most web design services have a simple drag-and-drop box to put a video on the website.

EVENTS PAGE

If you have a constant flow of events, an event page can be a great way for your fans to keep track of where you’re playing next.

I used to have an events page, but I stopped using it on my website. The page required regular updates and I could not justify the time spent on it.

The time is justifiable if you are primarily a performer and have regular concerts. It will lead people to your website to follow where you’re going to be next.

CONTACT PAGE

The contact page is the simplest of all. Have your contact information and a contact form clearly stated.

You might need to add CAPTCHA to your contact form if you start receiving too much spam. This is something you can do later, as well. Typically new websites do not receive much spam.

BLOG PAGE

A blog is completely optional. This section of your website would require regular work and good writing skills. It will help you establish your name as a professional and build your reputation. A constant flow of information will help to build SEO, getting more attention from Google, thus people searching for your services. I do not have a Blog page on my website.

Website examples built by music on the go

Photos for Your Musician Website

Photos are extremely important to having a successful classical musician website. Professional photos are preferred but you can take good enough photos yourself. The most common mistakes I see in website photos – not welcoming facial expressions and bad lighting.

Smile! Remember, parents and students are looking for a teacher who can work well with kids. Music lessons are an extracurricular activity. Try to make it look like you are actually enjoying your profession.
When you take your photos, the light should be in front of you, not in the back. If you have a window behind you, close the blinds. Ceiling lights can make strange shadows on your face. Dim the ceiling lights down or turn them off. You can just use a standing light in front of you. Try to find a balance between having enough light and not being blinded by the light.

Unless you’re good at taking photos, take multiple shots in each position. Count on being able to use one or two photos out of every 50 you take.

Use landscape mode the most, but, ideally, you should take photos in both orientations – landscape and portrait.

Save the photos in the largest file size possible, but don’t use RAW format unless you know how to do photo editing. The large file size will allow trimming and cropping and permit changing the photo’s orientation from landscape to portrait. Portrait mode is usually difficult or impossible to change into a landscape mode.

Portrait photo turned into a Landscape Mode

Try to find photos of you with your students or during live performances. Don’t forget to ask for a written permission from your students ‘parents to use their photo for a website. Never put up photos of anyone without written permission.

Photos are very important. They indicate to other parents that you are a trustworthy individual. Hopefully, your students look happy, and the photo will serve as a great recruiting tool.

Build a musician website

Whether you do it yourself or hire a professional (and we know just the people), a website is mandatory for every business, including your music business. Whether you’re a touring musician, a teacher, or both, you need a place on the internet where people can find you and help you easily.

Let Music on the Go Help

Let Music on the Go Help
Making a musician website can get overwhelming and expensive, but it doesn’t have to be.

Music on the Go is here to help. We’re musicians ourselves, and we understand that it’s hard starting your career as a classical musician. Musicians with knowledge of marketing, branding, and building a business are very limited. We musicians usually have limited funds and few technical skills.

Music on the Go offers the most affordable plans for professionally designed websites. We can even help you with content writing!