Building Your Artist Website

Your website is the place where your music, story, shows, and contact information can live under your own name. You do not need to hire a developer to launch a useful first version. A hosted website builder can handle much of the technical work while you focus on clear information, strong media, and an easy path for visitors to listen, follow, book, or buy.

The goal is not to build the biggest site. It is to create a dependable home base with an owned domain, a small number of useful pages, accessible content, and links that lead visitors to the next action. Search engines may help people discover that home base, but no setup guarantees that Google will index your pages or place them first in search results. Google describes SEO as helping search engines understand content and helping users find a site, while expressly warning that following its guidance does not guarantee indexing or first-place rankings. SEO Starter Guide: The Basics

Start with the visitor paths

Before choosing a template, decide what you want a visitor to do. An artist website usually serves several audiences:

• A new listener wants to hear your music quickly.
• A fan wants to join your email list, see upcoming dates, or find official links.
• A booker, journalist, or collaborator wants a concise introduction and a reliable way to contact you.
• A supporter may want to buy music, merchandise, tickets, or another offering available through your chosen tools.

These are visitor paths: simple routes from a person’s question to the information or action that answers it. Your home page should make the main routes obvious. A visitor should not have to guess where to listen, where to find your next show, or whether a contact form actually reaches you.

A practical first site can use this structure:

• Home: your name, a clear description of what you do, a prominent listening option, and your most important current update.
• Music or Work: releases, videos, recordings, projects, or a selected portfolio.
• About: a short biography written for a general reader, with useful context rather than unexplained career language.
• Contact: a labelled form or clearly displayed contact method, plus the kinds of inquiries you welcome.
• News or Tour: optional pages for regular updates, tour dates, announcements, or press information.

This is an editorial recommendation for usability and discoverability, not a legally required page list. Your structure can change with your career. A touring band may need a prominent calendar. A producer may need credits and services. A visual artist may need a portfolio before a news page. The important principle is that the site should reflect the questions your real visitors ask.

Choose and protect the domain

A custom domain is the address people type, share, and remember. It may be based on your artist name, band name, or a closely related phrase. Keep it short enough to say aloud, easy to spell, and consistent with the name you use elsewhere when possible.

Treat the domain as an important business and identity asset even if your site is a personal project. The registrar account, renewal email address, payment method, and DNS settings should be controlled by you or by a trusted organization with a clear handoff process. Do not let a former collaborator, temporary manager, or anonymous contractor become the only person who can renew or recover it.

A domain is not self-maintaining. ICANN explains that failure to renew can interrupt DNS service and may result in loss of the registration after applicable grace periods. It also notes that interruption or loss can create security or redirection problems. A Registrant’s Guide to Protecting Domain Name Registration Accounts

Turn on automatic renewal if it is available and appropriate for your situation, keep payment information current, and record where the domain is registered. Store recovery details securely. When you change platforms, the domain should remain under your control; changing a website builder should not require giving up the address your audience already knows.

Make the content discoverable

Search visibility starts with understandable content. Put important information in readable text rather than relying entirely on images, embedded graphics, or audio. Your artist name, descriptions of your work, release titles, event information, location where relevant, and contact purpose should be visible as text on the page.

Use descriptive page titles and headings. For example, “Maya Rivers — Electronic Producer and Live Set Dates” gives more context than a page titled only “Home.” Write naturally for people first, but make the subject of each page clear. Use one focused topic per page where that makes sense, and link related pages so visitors and search systems can follow the site.

Pages and resources intended for search should be crawlable. In plain language, that means search systems should be able to access the page and its important resources instead of encountering blocked or broken paths. Google recommends making crawlable resources accessible, using sitemaps to encourage crawling, putting key information in text, and using structured data where appropriate. Technical SEO Techniques and Strategies

Many hosted builders create a sitemap automatically, but check what your platform provides and whether your site is set to be visible to search engines when you are ready to launch. A sitemap can encourage crawling; it does not guarantee indexing. Likewise, adding keywords, structured data, or a blog cannot guarantee rankings. The useful test is whether a visitor can understand the page without needing to decode it.

Build the first version without overbuilding

Choose a platform that matches your comfort level and your next few needs. The right choice is usually the one you can maintain. A sophisticated system that you avoid updating is less useful than a modest site with current dates, working links, and accurate contact information.

Squarespace documents drag-and-drop editing and mobile-optimized sites, along with annual or monthly billing. Its plan documentation also describes plan-dependent page, contributor, commerce, and analytics features, and a first-year custom-domain offer with annual billing. Choosing the right Squarespace plan

Squarespace can be a reasonable fit if you want a general-purpose site with visual editing and room for pages, collaborators, commerce, or analytics depending on the plan you choose. Compare the plan features with your actual needs rather than assuming the highest tier is necessary.

Bandzoogle documents features designed specifically for musicians, including music players, music sales, tour-calendar integrations, contact forms, mailing lists, analytics, and custom-domain support. Its documentation says that feature limits vary by plan. Bandzoogle Pricing

Bandzoogle may fit an artist who wants music-specific tools in one place. Check the limits that matter to you: how many pages or uploads you need, how your mailing list works, whether your preferred sales or calendar functions are included, and what happens if your needs grow.

Wix states that its Premium plans can remove Wix ads and connect a personal domain, with storage, bandwidth, and support varying by plan. Wix Premium Plan Pricing

Wix may be useful if its editor and templates suit the way you want to build. The cited documentation supports those plan features, but it does not establish that Wix is more flexible, less flexible, better, or worse for beginners. Make that decision by testing the editor, checking mobile presentation, and confirming that the pages and integrations you need are available.

WordPress.com distinguishes fully hosted WordPress.com from self-hosted WordPress.org. WordPress.com documents included hosting and security features, while self-hosted WordPress.org requires separate hosting and user-managed maintenance. WordPress.com also states that annual or multi-year paid plans include a custom domain for the first year. WordPress.com Pricing

This distinction matters. “WordPress” is not one single hosting arrangement. A managed service can reduce maintenance work. A self-hosted installation can involve separate hosting, updates, security, backups, and troubleshooting. Choose the arrangement you are prepared to operate, not merely the name you recognize.

The evidence packet does not support fixed or universal price rankings for these platforms. Prices, plan names, taxes, fees, billing terms, and regional offers can change. Recheck each provider’s live pricing page immediately before publication or purchase, and label any price you publish with currency, territory, billing term, and access date.

Use a simple launch map

A manageable launch can follow this route:

1. Reserve or confirm your domain and secure the registrar account.
2. Choose a hosted platform after checking its current plan features.
3. Select a readable template that works on a phone.
4. Create Home, Music/Work, About, and Contact pages.
5. Add your best listening link, current biography, approved photos, and accurate contact destination.
6. Add optional News, Tour, press, shop, or email-list features only when they serve a real visitor need.
7. Review text, links, forms, media, and mobile layouts.
8. Check search visibility settings and the sitemap options your platform provides.
9. Connect the domain and test it from a private browser window or another device.
10. Set a recurring reminder to review dates, links, releases, contact details, renewal status, and accessibility.

Think of launch as the beginning of maintenance, not the finish line. Remove outdated tour announcements, replace broken embeds, update your bio when your work changes, and make sure the person receiving inquiries still monitors the inbox. A small monthly review can prevent a visitor from encountering information that is technically polished but practically stale.

Make the site accessible

Accessibility means designing and presenting the site so that more people can perceive, operate, understand, and use it. W3C identifies WCAG 2.2 as the latest recommended WCAG version. WCAG is organized around four principles—perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust—and includes testable conformance levels A, AA, and AAA. WCAG 2 Overview

You do not need to conduct a complete technical audit before publishing a first site, but you should build good habits into every page. Use descriptive alternative text for meaningful images. Provide captions for video. Give forms visible labels and clear instructions. Make errors understandable and noticeable. Use headings in a logical order, maintain sufficient color contrast, allow zoom, and make sure the site can be navigated with a keyboard.

For an artist site, accessibility also applies to the media itself. A poster image should not be the only place where a show date, venue, or ticket link appears. A video announcement should have captions or a text equivalent. A graphic containing your artist name should not replace the text name in the page content. The U.S. Department of Justice lists alt text, captions, labelled forms, headings, contrast, and keyboard access as practical considerations. Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA

In the United States, DOJ guidance says ADA Title III applies to businesses open to the public and discusses goods, services, privileges, or activities offered online. The page is informal guidance, is not legally binding, and does not prescribe one detailed technical standard for every business. Legal obligations depend on jurisdiction, entity type, service, and applicable law. Treat this as practical educational guidance, not individualized legal advice.

Handle email responsibly

An email-list signup can give fans a direct way to hear about releases, shows, or news. Keep the signup language clear: tell people what they are signing up to receive and use a provider that gives you a workable unsubscribe process. Avoid adding people to marketing mail simply because you found their address or exchanged a message.

For commercial email in the United States, the Federal Trade Commission says CAN-SPAM covers commercial email, including website promotion. Its guidance describes accurate headers, non-deceptive subject lines, a valid physical address, a clear opt-out mechanism, and honoring opt-outs within 10 business days. CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business

These are U.S.-specific regulator requirements. Other jurisdictions may impose additional consent, content, retention, or opt-out rules. If your list reaches people in multiple countries, check the rules that apply to your activity and audience. Open Music Business provides educational content, not individualized legal or compliance advice.

A worked example

Suppose you are an independent singer-songwriter preparing an EP. Your first home page could show your artist name, one sentence describing the project, a prominent “Listen” link, and the next confirmed show. The Music page could contain the EP track list, a short project note, and accessible text links to official listening destinations. The About page could provide a 150-word biography and a press contact. The Contact page could separate booking inquiries from general messages with clear labels. A Tour page could list only confirmed dates and link to tickets.

You would then test the route a new listener takes: Home to Music to a working listening destination. Next, test the fan route: Home to Tour or email signup. Finally, test the professional route: Home to About to Contact. If any route ends in an outdated page, an unlabeled form, an image with no text equivalent, or a missing domain, fix that before adding another feature.

Your next steps

Reserve or confirm a domain you control. Choose one platform based on the features you will use in the next year. Write the four core pages before worrying about advanced design. Put important information in text, check mobile and keyboard use, test every form and link, confirm your search visibility settings, and create a renewal and review reminder.

Your website does not need to prove your entire career. It needs to make the next useful action easy—and remain accurate, reachable, and under your control.