Options for band website?

I want to put up a website for a number of different projects and I am reaching out to the MeFiMu masses for options on band websites.

I do a lot of web work for a living so designing and building a site is no problem, but there are a number of services out there which seem to take the grunt-work out of building a site, and all of the associated functions (media players, social & share, purchase, etc.).

In terms of the visitor’s experience, I’d like them to be able to view a list of all releases, and then click through to see a specific release. I specifically want to present the music as singles, EPs and LPs as I think this is incredibly important – websites that just contain a plethora of media players leave me cold – I want people to see the sleeve artwork (which we are creating even though there will be no physical release), photos, booklet, lyrics, etc. I’d like to be able to add lots of artwork, and lots of words.

In terms of design, the more flexible the better. Especially if you can customise the layout, the CSS and upload images. Any SEO options would be welcome (control over page title, meta, headings plus sitemaps)

I’d like them to be able to play the tracks (and maybe download them as well, not sure yet) and would like the player to be elegant. I really like the Soundcloud player, but it is in Flash and so will not work on mobile Apple devices (cheers Steve). A JQuery player would be better.

I’d like there to be good quality social/share functions, especially Facebook & Twitter. Also, it would be great to get decent usage statistics and be able to plug in Google analytics & Google Webmaster Tools (from sitemap).

So, whaddya think? Bandcamp is popular - is it any good? Any decent paid services out there?

Cheers,

Darren

posted by the_very_hungry_caterpillar (9 comments total)

I use bandcamp just cause I'm not a genius at webdesign and you can customize it enough that it blends in with the rest of your site pretty seemlessly if your design isn't to elaborate or flash or anything like that. You can change the url so it's music.yourdomain.com instead of a bandcamp url. You can set your main page so it displays newest releases only or all your releases, and you can choose which releases you want to show. You can show cover art and have lyrics and info.
The player is pretty simple and customizeable and is easily embedded in other pages or wordpress blogs or whatever. One thing I don't like is that the streaming preview song is at 128k which gets a bit warbly at times.
Also you can set your download charges to free or whatever you want; you get a bunch of promo codes so people can download stuff free.
It's not perfect but it's all I need right now.

My site's nothing great but feel free to check it out, link's in my profile.
posted by chococat at 4:24 PM on July 15, 2011

I just made this site over the past 10 days or so, using Weebly. Super easy to put together. I think I might take a page out of chococat's book and use Bandcamp for audiofiles, though.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:46 PM on July 15, 2011

Hey chococat, the combination of the image you selected with the title of the release ("One Shitty February") is sublime perfection. Great jacket for "Toronto", too.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:48 PM on July 15, 2011

And Darren, you asked about paid services... I don't even know that much about them yet, but if you go pro with Weebly there are, of course, more options, including an audio player. But I haven't looked into it.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:50 PM on July 15, 2011

Looking around at bandcamp, I'm pretty sure I'll make a site there too.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:08 PM on July 15, 2011

We've been using Bandcamp for a couple years now, and I'm really pleased with how user-friendly it is, both on the artist-side and consumer-side of the equation. I highly recommend it to, basically, anyone.
posted by askmeaboutLOOM at 11:27 PM on July 15, 2011

Can't recommend Bandcamp enough. Does everything you want - customisation, sharing, stats, multi-format downloads, cute embeddable widgets, really easy to integrate into the rest of your site as the 'music' page - see eg mine. Oh and they make it easy for people to pay you for the music / let you set your own pricing options including free. Can't see what a paid service could provide that would improve on it.
posted by motty at 8:06 AM on July 16, 2011

I use Wordpress for the site itself then put all the Music up on Bandcamp / Soundcloud these days. the embedding is really easy with both.

Soundcloud for Drafts / Demos
Bandcamp for 'releases'

I think they are the best services around but yeah Soundcloud is Flash. - what does bandcamp use? is it not Flash? I'm vaguely remember playing some songs on my ipod touch so I assume its not
posted by mary8nne at 4:23 AM on July 21, 2011

On AntonioLulic.com, I use Wordpress, with a custom template, and Soundcloud and HTML5 YouTube embeds, as well as some custom Flickr API stuff. As I understand it, paid Soundcloud users can access HTML5 players, but you'll have to style it yourself.

I use Gigpress to handle tour date listings. It's great, but there's no Songkick integration, so I'm contemplating switching over to using a Songkick plugin instead.
posted by armoured-ant at 8:31 AM on July 22, 2011