Building and maintaining a website is one of the most important things you can do for your business as a musician. Your website is the information hub for your empire. It works 24/7 to engage, educate, and inform viewers. It also has the vital job of converting visitors into subscribers, convincing prospects to hire you for entertainment, and selling your music and merchandise. Consequently, your official online presence must be powerful, polished, and of the highest quality. Most of all, it must be affordable so you can translate a profit for all of your hard work. One of the best ways to build and maintain a website is through WordPress – the most powerful open source web design engine currently on the market. WordPress has countless theme options for creating a design that fits your business goals and your branding. Some are quite expensive boasting price tags over $100. However, you can design a very nice custom website using a free theme as well! Did you know, WordPress offers beautiful free themes specifically designed for musicians and artists? We’ve already looked through the available free themes and picked out 10 we think offer strong features for musicians to look their best online. Here they are…
Music Club Lite
Music Club Lite is a traditional and professional looking theme designed for the music industry. Naturally, it has some pretty common features you’ll want like a banner/slider, event list, and music and video players. It also has some unique surprises that helps it stand out a little, like a clean image slider that can be used to access different media or pages, an event tracker that can highlight and countdown to your next upcoming show, and a media player made up of disc shaped images that spin when you scroll over them. Music Club Lite also has prominent social media options and is a responsive design that adapts to the visitor’s screen size and shape.
Euphony
Euphony is a clean and modern theme for the music industry packed with lots of great features. It includes must-haves like an event list, modern looking music and video players, a photo gallery grid, and a blog section featuring the latest posts. It also has tons of bonus features like a testimonial slider, a band member grid, and content bars that can be used to list services offered, sponsors, and/or stats like number of albums released, number of tours, etc. The key bonus features though are the newsletter sign-up widget and online store section, which can help you increase your subscribers while also selling more merchandise respectively. Euphony also has social media options, is translation ready, and is a fully responsive design.
Audioman
Audioman is a modern and professional looking theme for the music industry. While it doesn’t have any unique features, it has a lot of the basics an artist needs like a music playlist, testimonial slider, blog post section, and portfolio that can be used for photos, videos, etc. It also gives you several options for highlighting featured pages and allows for design flexibility with a customizable background and logos. Lastly, Audioman has social media options, is translation ready with RTL support, and is a fully responsive design.
Sungit Lite
Sungit Lite is a modern, clean, and simple theme for the music industry. It includes a music player and media list, as well as an image bar that can be used to access blog posts or tour dates. It also offers a banner/slider with simple animation that is a nice touch, and you can include up to 3 widgets in the footer that can be useful. Lastly, Sungit Lite has social media options, is translation ready, and is a fully responsive design.
Surplus Concert
Surplus Concert is a modern and simple theme for the music industry. It’s main features are a banner/slider and a blog post section. We’re not sure if it includes specific music and video player widgets or social media icons, but all of those things can be added through links to soundcloud, youtube, facebook, etc. Surplus Concert is translation ready and is a fully responsive design.
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Athena
Athena is a clean and modern multipurpose theme that can be used as a musician site. What allows this design to stand out is all of the action it offers, including a banner/slider with transition effects and several different types of animated content bars that move when scrolled over. It is also WooCommerce ready, which allows you to easily sell merchandise online. We’re not sure if it includes specific widget players for music and video, but again those things can be added through links. Athena does have social media options and is a fully responsive design.
Modeling Lite
Modeling Lite is a fashion and modeling theme that can be used as a musician site. With its full-screen banner/slider and multiple animated features, this design has the potential to have a strong visual presence. It also has a testimony slider and stats feature, and its many content widgets can be linked to media and used as players. Modeling Lite also has social media options.
Clean Fotagrafie
Clean Fotagrafie is a photography specific theme that can be used as a musician site. Similar to Modeling Lite, it is primarily visual in nature, so with the right images it can have a very strong presence. The portfolio and featured widgets can both probably be converted into media players. Clean Fotagrafie is also a fully responsive design.
EightPhoto
EightPhoto is another photography specific theme that can be used as a musician site. Its grid-style gallery widget could be converted into a media player, while it also includes a banner/slider, stats widget, and blog post feature. EightPhoto also has social media options and is a fully responsive design.
Rock Star
Rock Star is a raw and edgy looking theme for the music industry. It offers common features like a full-screen banner/slider, media player and gallery, tour widget, and a news/blog section. Some unique features include the option for multiple full-screen background images and an animated logo option that grows and shrinks depending on whether you scroll up or down. Rock Star also has a social media option, is translation ready, and is a responsive design that adapts to the visitor’s screen size and shape.
Having a WordPress powered website gives you access to practically any tool you can think of to provide a memorable experience for your website visitors. Choose any of these free themes to design a high quality website that will keep your website visitors engaged. While you can get a free theme from WordPress, we do recommend getting domain hosting so that you can gain credibility and more autonomy over the content on your music website. Check out Bluehost for some of the most affordable hosting plans available starting as low as $3.95 a month. With this combination of free and affordable website building options, there’s absolutely no reason a musician should go without a beautiful website backed by a custom domain. Are you using WordPress for your music website? Do you have any favorite music themes you’d like to recommend? Tell us in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you.
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