Welcome to the Make It In Music Resources Page, our carefully chosen list of tools, websites, services and companies that we strongly recommend for building your successful career in music.
We’ve tried and tested everything that we recommend on this page and website. In fact, most of them we use daily and we consider them to be excellent tools for the job.
The first batch of tools and services in the list below are all to do with building and maintaining your band website. That should be no surprise as so much of our advice is about placing a website that you control fully at the heart of your music career and all your music promotion and marketing and fanbase growth.
Rest assured that you will become so familiar with dealing with your website that it will be just like another instrument.
We will be adding further resources to help in all areas and aspects of your career and expanding this Resource section in the near future.
Before you get stuck into the list, here’s an important disclosure that we want you to know:
Some of the links on this page (and elsewhere on this site) are affiliate links. Tha means that we may earn a commission if you choose to make a purchase after clicking on a link here. Any payment to us is at no additional cost to you. We recommend these products and services because we believe in them. We find them to be helpful and useful, and we will never recommend any service that we have not used or that we feel is anything less than excellent. We do not include anything here solely because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy. We advise you not to spend your money on these products unless you are sure that they will help you achieve your goals.
THE FOUR ELEMENTS YOU NEED TO BUILD YOUR BAND WEBSITE
Our ‘Build Your Band Website - The Definitive Guide’ series is a seven part video tutorial series that shows you exactly how to build your band website using four tools and services.
You can learn more here.
The four tools that we recommend and use in the tutorial videos are:
Namecheap is the company that we recommend for buying your domain name for your musician website. Artists and bands should try to get the ‘.com’ version of their artist name. Failing that, try adding something like ‘music’ or ‘official’ to your artist name so you have ‘yourbandnamemusic.com’ or similar and try to get all the matching social profile addresses. ‘.com’ domains are generally $9 per year or less.
Hostgator is the company that we recommend for webhosting because we use them for this site and for all of the band websites we’ve built over the years. Their one-click WordPress installation makes it very easy to get your band website site up and running and their excellent customer service means we’ve never had a problem with any site. Get started for less than $4 per month with our coupon code - MIIM25
Aweber is the tool that we recommend for email management of your fan mailing list. This is the tool that we use day in day out for the mailing list for this site and for all our musician clients. We love it because it has professional level features such as segmentation and high deliverability rates, but also because it is very easy to learn how to use. You get your first month for free and then it’s from $19 per month.
Seedprod’s ‘Coming Soon’ page plugin is the simplest way for a musician to build a landing page or squeeze page. It also allows you to start collecting the emails of your fans immediately after you launch your band website before you finish the design. It’s flexible and offers limitless design options so that you can make a great looking page to direct your fans to for them to join your email list. One off cost of $29.
Namecheap is the company that we recommend for buying your domain name for your musician website. Artists and bands should try to get the ‘.com’ version of their artist name. Failing that, try adding something like ‘music’ or ‘official’ to your artist name so you have ‘yourbandnamemusic.com’ or similar and try to get all the matching social profile addresses. ‘.com’ domains are generally $9 per year or less.
Hostgator is the company that we recommend for webhosting because we use them for this site and for all of the band websites we’ve built over the years. Their one-click WordPress installation makes it very easy to get your band website site up and running and their excellent customer service means we’ve never had a problem with any site. Get started for less than $4 per month with our coupon code - MIIM25
Aweber is the tool that we recommend for email management of your fan mailing list. This is the tool that we use day in day out for the mailing list for this site and for all our musician clients. We love it because it has professional level features such as segmentation and high deliverability rates, but also because it is very easy to learn how to use. You get your first month for free and then it’s from $19 per month.
Seedprod’s ‘Coming Soon’ page plugin is the simplest way for a musician to build a landing page or squeeze page. It also allows you to start collecting the emails of your fans immediately after you launch your band website before you finish the design. It’s flexible and offers limitless design options so that you can make a great looking page to direct your fans to for them to join your email list. One off cost of $29.
WORDPRESS TOOLS AND SERVICES FOR YOUR BAND WEBSITE
We hugely advocate that you should build your band website using WordPress on your own hosting. Do not be afraid of using WordPress. You will be able to make it do what you want and there’s an amazing number and range of types of help on offer. You will almost always be able to deal with any problem you come across without spending more money but there are paid services included below for those that want to take on more advanced stuff on their own. Working with WordPress gets easier to do with every passing day as WordPress becomes more ubiquitous, but there’s also a massive support community and experts to call on if you need to.
These tools and services will either enhance your WordPress band website or be useful if you need help!
Wordpress Support
This is the official WordPress support community. It’s mind blowingly comprehensive and supportive and you will always be able to find a friendly helping hand. Note that this is a completely community based forum support so you’ll usually be getting help from another WordPress user. This should be your first port of call if you need any help with any WordPress issues with your band website.
WPBeginner
WPBeginner is a blog that sets out to give practical advice on almost every aspect of running a website on WordPress. There are literally thousands of blogs and advice sites that you could turn to as you learn more about running your WordPress site, but, for us, this one stands above the noise. Great articles on almost everything you could ever need. You’ll probably find this becoming regular reading!
WP101
We’re members of this WordPress tutorial site. It’s a paid site with three levels of access, but it’s a one time fee for lifetime access to their extremely high quality and regularly updated WordPress tutorials. We have the ‘Ultimate’ membership level and often refer back to their training or forums. Well worth the investment as you build out and rely more on your WordPress band website.
WP Curve
WP Curve gives you access to world class WordPress developers on call 24/7 to fix anything that breaks on your band website or, indeed, to help you make your WordPress website do something you can’t figure out. They also backup your site so you have a permanent safety copy. As it’s an ongoing monthly fee this isn't for everyone, but if you’re making money from your music already it’s well worth a look.
Sucuri Security
You won’t need this when you first build your band website but as it becomes a key asset of your music career you’ll want to invest in this security service. Sucuri is the default standard in protecting your WordPress site from malware, hacking and other security threats. Their service constantly scans your WordPress site for threats and their team work with you to fix your band website if you have an attack.
WORDPRESS THEMES FOR YOUR BAND WEBSITE
Once you’ve built your band website you’ll want to design it to suit your needs, taste, brand and genre. The overall design (the ‘look and feel’ if you like) of WordPress sites is controlled by a ‘Theme’. There are thousands of Themes available, both free and premium. As you’d imagine the premium themes tend to have crisper design and slicker code to make your website faster and more robust, as well as better in design terms. There are though many great free Themes as well and a Google search or a free Theme directory might turn up a design you want to use for your band website.
Below we list a few Theme resources where we recommend you start your search for the right Theme for your band website.
Themeforest
Theme Forest is the ‘go to’ destination for Premium WordPress Themes. It’s part of a larger group of businesses that can serve your every website need. When you purchase anything from any strand of the business you’ll get an ‘Envato’ account and access to all the marketpalaces.For Themes, simply go to Theme Forest and look for responsive themes that you like and try searching for ‘musician Theme’ or ‘band Theme’.
WP Bakery Page
Builder
This is a Plugin for WordPress (and was formerly called Visual Composer) that allows you to build any page or post on your band website using a drag and drop system. Many people find this an easier way to build their WordPress site as it offers more flexibility. Many Themes come with this Plugin included or it can be used on any WordPress site with any Theme. We recommend looking for a Theme that includes it for maximum flexibility.
Thrive Themes
We love Thrive Themes. This site is built using it as are many of our clients. It is not really just a WordPress Theme as these days it comes with a very simple to use and versatile page builder called Thrive Architect, an email capture tool called Thrive Leads and is very focused on making your website generate results - which we like a lot. All the tools work together seamlessly and you can build almost anything you can imagine - and their support and tutorials are fantastic. Very highly recommended.
More Resources covering other aspects of your music career will be added very shortly