How Important is it to Have a Website?

[The Mogpipe]

I used to design websites and I think yours is very nice. I think having a website is necessary, plus all the social media, don't pick one over another, they all help. I went to a concert last night by a group I never heard of, so the first thing I did was look for a web site, found it a learned all about them.

Here's my bit of feedback, I always told my clients who used generic email services like Gmail, to use their web site email service, much more professional looking; [email protected].

Bandzoogle offers a dedicated email.
It costs extra. Plan on doing it just haven't got there yet.

 

[garp]

Nobody in our band likes Facebook. Nevertheless, we have a FB page with events announcing gigs, photos of the band and fans at gigs, and videos. Most importantly, clubs contact us through FB to book gigs. This makes life easier. Thus we're willing to overcome our Facebook aversion. We see it as a necessary evil.

Thanks for bringing this to light. As someone who still clings to email as a primary communication tool, I've obviously got a thing or two to learn about how peeps are connecting these days.

 

[mambo4]

My first impulse was to say a web site is required
But after reading posts by the younguns,
I agree the social media presence (fb/twitter/instagram/youtube channel) is more of a necessity these days.

 

[tycobb73]

I book acts for a bar. If you have both you are fine. I want Facebook over a website. In fact i only book through Facebook messenger. It keeps track of all of our correspondence and is easy to see. The owner requires the band to make a Facebook event and make the bar a cohost. Don't want to? That's ok, i need some way to weed out the inquiries.

 

[Wolford]

It seems like any more most organizations that have events do it with a Facebook page you could have a regular web page for reference and Link it to your Facebook page then update it regularly on Facebook probably easier than updating your web page all the time.

My band uses fb. It's not ideal if you want to control everything about the site, but its free and visible even to those that don't have fb accounts..

 

[LBS-bass]

It helps, if for no other reason than search results. Just have one page if you don't want to be bothered. I mean, there's really no reason not to have anything.

Right. But a lot of people saying this aren't making a distinction between having a dedicated website and having a Facebook page. It's absolutely critical that you get something out there that's searchable. If people are searching on FB they are for sure going to find you there. Your FB page is also likely to come up early in a generic search on band names through Google, unless you gave your band such a generic name that it's a common phrase (hint: that's not a good idea. Don't name your band "chocolate" unless you want to compete with Nestle for search position).

 

[LBS-bass]

Bandzoogle offers a dedicated email.
It costs extra. Plan on doing it just haven't got there yet.

Dedicated email is highly overrated. If you're not paying a premium price for email servers, expect it to be down frequently. The imagined boost of having my email address be something like "[email protected]" is not significant enough for me to pay those premiums so that I can get a reliable server. Gmail accounts are just fine for most of us.

 

[jblock]

In this day and age, secure domains, hosting and email are dirt cheap. I’ve never paid more than $50 per year for all of that over the last 20+ years. A necessary expense and about the price of two sets of strings. Yes, reliability was an issue in the early days but I haven't had an issue in over 10 years. All the providers are using AWS or Microsoft or Google these days anyway, which is reliable enough. if you have a domain name and hosting, you might as well use your email domain as well. Just spend some time to research whatever provider you’re evaluating.

 

[sqlb3rn]

My personal domain has a hyphen, and it's an utter pig to communicate to people: "sorry, was that a slash, a hyphen, a dash or an underscore?" And that's with verbal communication, before you try writing it down on unlined paper...

I'm still confused by the confusion between a slash and a dash, but I often run into dialect issues, so I put it down to one of those.

/slash \backslash —dash -hyphen _underscore

 

[equill]

/slash \backslash —dash -hyphen _underscore

You'd think, right?

 

[The Mogpipe]

Dedicated email is highly overrated. If you're not paying a premium price for email servers, expect it to be down frequently. The imagined boost of having my email address be something like "[email protected]" is not significant enough for me to pay those premiums so that I can get a reliable server. Gmail accounts are just fine for most of us.

I agree. I decided to keep it Gmail just changed it to jacqueserics@

 

[dtripoli]

Conversation with a club or bar or event coordinator;

Manager, "Hey, I hear your band is really good, what's your website so I can show the owner and get you guys booked"
Pays $400 + tips. Most bands leave the show with $100 to $150 each in pocket.

No website band rep, "Uh, we don't use a website. Most people know us and our reputation speaks for itself"

Manager, "Well we don't know you and half our regulars don't either"

No website band rep, "Trust me we are really good"

Manager, "That may be true but we don't hire bands without seeing them or at the least hearing them first"

No website band rep, "Uh, well um, that's normal I suppose but...."

Manager, "Yes it is and we book 3 months ahead so I'd get going on that"

3 months later....and still no website....

No website band rep to band mates, "Guys we need more gigs. We're 10 times better than most the local bands and they are playing all the time.
Should we add more current songs or practice more?"

 

[sqlb3rn]

For a small local band, I thought it would be cool to pass out "business cards" with a QR code, that loads your band website and automatically plays a track. So to share your music, people just have to scan a QR code with their phone and they hear the music immediately. You could even have it on a band banner on stage, and people in the audience could scan it. I would try the QR code thing but just got fired from the band I recently joined... so, next time.

 

[jblock]

It also depends on the demographic of your audience. I know this is a bit of a broad brush stroke but most folks under 30 don’t use Facebook.

 

[DirtDog]

If you expect to get gigs, it is essential. Fans can see where you are playing. More importantly, when you speak to venue owners, you just point them to your site. In ten seconds, they have your entire press kit on their phone, including hearing your demo.

+1 on that. Also +1 for Bandzoogle. Very painless to set up and maintain. built for this exact purpose. Still should have social media presence. Besides Facebook and Twitter, Instagram is also recommended.

 

[JPaulGeddy]

imo, websites are for interacting with booking agents - i.e., your EPK. Social media is the part for interacting/attracting people to shows.

 

[LBS-bass]

I repeat: You have to have something. My band has a Facebook page, and I have videos on a YouTube channel. We also do have a dedicated website, but it's not very important to us in the overall scheme of things.

Is this conversation about a dedicated website with a domain like "myband.com" or is it about a presence on the web where people who might hire you and fans can find you? Because you absolutely have to have the latter, but that's not what I thought this thread was asking about.

 

[BigBatch]

I’d think these days a Facebook page is more important than a web page. Once you get someone to like your FB page you can send stuff right to their feed announcing gig dates and such. A few bands around here do this very well one of them posts a lot of funny videos along with gig info. One of them likes to live stream before their shows and even a bit of their practice sessions as well as gig dates and info. With Facebook they don’t have to go look at your site, you send your information and stuff To their feed.

 

[stringthrough]

Having one won't guarantee the band's success, but not having one could be one reason a band fails.

 

[Evil Funk]

a site is nice to have.

my band doesn't have one, and we still play at least once a week for $800-1000 per show split 4 ways. maybe we'd get a lot more gigs at better pay if we had a website, but no one in the band seems to be all that interested in having one.