How to create a perfect page to sell music on your website

Since music and sales are so essential to a band’s website, the Music page itself deserves time and care. It reflects who you are as an artist. It should give your fans a deeper look into your process and personality, while providing them with lots of options to stream and purchase your music.

If you’ve been thinking about selling music online, your website is the perfect place to do it. Having your own custom website to sell your music gives you full control over your pricing, your design, and your content. Plus, any sales you make through your website are commission-free, putting more money into your pocket.

Fans are eager to support their favourite acts directly, and steering them to your music website is something they'll be grateful for—when they spend their hard-earned money, they want those funds to reach the artist directly. This, in turn, keeps you making more music!

If you’ve been thinking about how to sell your music independently, here are a few ways to get started with selling your music directly to fans through your website:

Sell your music on your website's Music page
Sell physical music like CDs, cassettes, and vinyl
Tell a story with your music
Add free downloads to build your fanbase
Use Smart Links
Add context to your music
Include options to share your music
Music website design

Sell your music on your website's Music page

As an independent artist, the best place for you to sell music is on your own music website. Many music fans feel a connection with their favourite artists and want to support them. With fewer live shows these days, selling your music online directly to fans is a good way to build that connection.

To start, create a page where you plan to sell your music. Think of it as your online shop. Your music is the product, so you want to show it at its best to encourage people to make a purchase.

Many of your website visitors will be coming to your site specifically to listen to your music. Be sure that your Music page is clearly marked in your menu so that it’s easy to locate. To steer even more people to where your music can be purchased, add a call-to-action at the top of your homepage that links over to your Music page.

You can sell full albums, EPs, singles, and more on your Music page. Make sure they are easy to locate and that the buy buttons are clear. You’ll want to be sure that the checkout process is seamless and works well on both desktop and mobile devices.

Sell physical music like CDs, cassettes, and vinyl

Making sure you sell physical music options is another way to build your fanbase. Many fans love to own hard copies of their favorite music, and they'll often buy an album at a live show, or pre-order a CD, cassette, or vinyl record. 

Add your physical music items to a Store feature on your Music page so they're available for your fans to buy any time. If you'd like, you can seamlessly include the digital download with the purchase—that way anyone buying a CD, cassette, or vinyl can listen to your music digitally as well.

You can also add limited-edition CDs, cassettes, or vinyl to your store: consider providing autographed items, or limited-run pressings that feature different artwork or colour options. Use Bandzoogle's Store feature to automatically track inventory, so you don't have to count each sale to know when your limited stock has sold out.

Artist: Wolf & Moon

Tell a story with your music

Whether you’re a singer-songwriter, a DJ, a rapper, sound engineer, or producer, you have a story to tell. This story should come across on your Music page.

You can accomplish this by organizing your music on the page, then adding information about it in text alongside your albums and tracks, or in a column on the side.

Be sure to add your most recent releases at the top of the page, to give your returning visitors something new to hear. You can add your back catalog of albums as well, lower down on the page, for people to easily browse everything you've released.

This page is the place to tell your story through your songs. Adding all of your music in chronological order starting at the top of the page creates a flow that reflects your musical journey. Some descriptive accompanying helps to drive home the message, and creates a more personal experience for your fans.

Add free downloads to build your fanbase

Offering a few free digital downloads is a great way to build your fanbase. People will download a song just because it’s free, and it's a tried-and-true way to easily entice people to hear your music—they’ll listen to the free download and come back for more once they know they like your sound.

Even better, offer a track in exchange for an email address, which helps you grow your email list. Reaching your fanbase by email remains one of the most effective ways to keep in contact with your fans, allowing you to easily share updates about new releases and upcoming shows. This communication with your fanbase helps to generate more direct-to-fan sales—promotion by email still dominates as one of the best channels for engagement and sales.

Use Smart Links

While managing your own custom artist website is the best tool to help you make money selling your music online, there is something to be said for music discovery. Letting your fans know about the many options they have to consume your music can’t hurt.

Smart Links are direct links to your music, and they can be featured on any page of your website or EPK. You can integrate them on a Music page to promote a new album, or you can create a dedicated landing page to drive fans from social media to play and buy your music.

Adding Smart Links through Bandzoogle is simple, and the feature automatically blends to compliment your existing page content. This includes services like Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon Music, Deezer, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Spotify, and more. You can even add links to specific custom destinations, like a podcast if you host one!

The design of the Smart Links feature is clean and professional—it provides a simple, organized stack of links to every platform where your music is available, making it easy and inviting for fans to support you.

Artist: SuperKnova

Add context to your music

In addition to adding some general text about your music on this page, get specific with album or single details. Include details about the genre, your inspiration, where it was recorded, and what makes it special. Your fans will enjoy learning about what made this music important to you.

With your own music website, you have the chance to make a Music page that surpasses what fans would experience buying your music elsewhere. You control the content and design, and you can add extra information to make your Music page personal. This really helps convert visitors from casual listeners into longtime supportive fans.

After you place an album with its details and artwork on the page, add some descriptive text about that album. Talk about the album's concept, and how and when the music was made. You can even add a review or quote about the release. Add this text above, below, or beside the album.

Add your lyrics to your music players as well, for any fans that are curious to read the words to your songs. Another option is to create a 'Lyrics' submenu page for your music section, and post all of your lyrics directly there.

Artist: Rocky Leon

Include options to share your music

Your custom music website is your online hub. From there, you can share your curated content to other platforms. Social media is a good choice—you can choose what and where to share, depending on which platforms you are most active on.

By sharing a track and directing people back to your website, they can learn more about your music and check out your other tracks. Enable share options directly on your tracks to make them easy for anyone to share. You can also encourage fans to share your music by adding some text to your Music page that points out your click-and-share buttons.

Music website design

Now that you’ve decided on the content for your Music page, make your website design reflect your style of music and your personality.

Decide how you want to organize your music on the page. You might want to sell full albums with tracks also available for individual purchase. You might want to sell your latest single at the very top of the page, and follow that with other singles you've released; or you could create a grid layout to list multiple albums at once.

Organize your music into columns, either stacked into full-width sections, or side by side. Sections provide a nice way to separate your albums and other content, and you can add an image to the background for visual interest. This creates a modern look in with a clean visual experience, and allows you to repeat key images within the page design.

Once you've got a rough layout of your content, take a critical look at your page. Make sure the text is easy to read against the background, and that your album art stands out. You may want to add section titles to make your page even more clean and organized. Put a pop of color on the play button to catch people's eyes, encouraging visitors to stream and buy your music.

If you’re looking to create a separate page for each album, you could create a layout on one page, and then duplicate that page. Update the new page with your next album’s information. On your Music page, add thumbnail images for each album, and link each one to the corresponding album page you created. You could also set those albums into sub-pages under your main Music page to keep things easy to navigate.

Artist: Wildlight

Your music is a reflection of who you are, and your Music page should show this as well. Create a Music page where the overall look matches your sound and your personality. This will help you to sell more music and build up your fanbase, in turn helping you to create more music.