In the ever-evolving music industry, artists frequently find themselves at the crossroads of tradition and innovation. As the digital era continues to reshape the way we consume and share music, the question arises: Should artists have a website?
An online presence is often a gateway to recognition, collaboration, and opportunities, and the importance of cultivating a virtual home for your work cannot be overstated. But is a website a mere formality, or does it hold the potential to unlock new possibilities for artists in our interconnected creative ecosystem?
Join us as we explore the benefits and considerations that come with establishing a digital footprint, and contemplate the role of websites in shaping the future of musical expression.
Amanda Cook: Yes
Speaking as the editor of I CARE IF YOU LISTEN, I absolutely think that having an artist website is essential. The number of outlets covering new and experimental music are dwindling by the day, making it even more important to cultivate strong relationships with the few remaining platforms that might be interested in your work. One of the most helpful things you can do is make yourself easy to promote by having a single, organized online space for your artistic assets. A website is a convenient container for these essentials, which include hi-res photos with photographer credit, a bio with your pronouns and correct spelling/stylization of your name, embeddable media related to your projects, and a contact form or email address.
As someone who is routinely trying to connect artists to new collaborators and audiences, it also seems like a huge missed opportunity to actually get your album/concert reviewed or secure a big interview and not have a website for online media outlets to link to. If people read an article on ICIYL and want to learn more about you and your music, I want to be able to send that web traffic your way!
Your website doesn’t necessarily have to be beautiful – it just has to be functional and intuitive to navigate. However, if you have the capacity to invest more in your website, it can be a powerful visual storytelling tool that allows you to control your artistic image and narrative by modeling how you want to be represented and offering context to your work.
Forrest Howell: Eventually
Most of what I have to say regarding websites is informed by my experiences as an early-career performer who grew up as the internet was in its first stage of rapid expansion. Websites tend to follow a slower, more sporadic content cycle than most social media platforms; but, that doesn’t make them irrelevant. In a sea of quick-turnover media, websites can have an anchoring effect on an artist’s brand, emphasizing the quality and longevity of their work. Within the context of a designated website, features like press reviews, work samples, news updates, and online shops give a sense of legitimacy, like a brick-and-mortar store for your creative output.
For early-career artists, however, orienting your brand in a rapidly shifting cultural landscape can be a challenge, and deciding how to market your work digitally can be intimidating. Social media can act as a helpful intermediate step, where you can build a digital presence while you are still developing. Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok prioritize brevity, accessibility, and personality in content; and, whereas websites do not often prompt social interaction, these platforms encourage discussion and feedback while also providing useful engagement metrics (e.g. views, interactions, clickthrough rates).
As your brand becomes better defined and you have amassed enough material to assemble a portfolio, I believe that is the time to strongly consider developing a website. However, similar to a corporate website, an artist website should set a tone consistent with your work and style. Though having a website can signal credibility, a visit to a poorly designed or infrequently updated one can lead to disappointment and brand confusion.
Jenn Jolley: Definitively yes
I’m a composer, conductor, professor, and occasional contributing writer. On my website, I have an up-to-date bio, recent photos, contacts for me and my distributor, videos of performances, and links for rentals and purchases. It allows performers to explore all aspects of my work and serves as an easy, single source for information and images if they decide to program my work.
My web activity dates back to a high school GeoCities page, and continued in grad school with the launch of my “Why Compose?” blog. I currently maintain that blog and my professional website, which is indispensable. A website allows you to be accessible and control your online presence. And while the cost isn’t insignificant, the alternatives are insufficient. Institutional web pages — if you’re lucky enough to have one — are rarely updated. Social media, while adding a sense of community, is too rigid in its layout and too limited in the information you can provide.
I’ve publicly asked this question on Facebook, and there is a clear preference for having a website among women, people of color, and alumni of schools that are not considered “elite.” For us, a website offers visibility outside of exclusive networks. That said, I don’t know if this will always be necessary — platforms like Bandcamp, YouTube, and Scorefollower are increasingly suitable alternative venues. If I were just starting my career today, I might consider building an audience on one before committing resources to a website. But until these alternative venues are more established with their offerings, I believe you should have a website.
Julia Kulhman: Yes
As a historian working on new music, I interact with artist websites on almost a daily basis. Certainly, a lot of this time is spent sifting through an unending stream of minutiae. Concert dates and locations, or years of attendance at a university or festival can build out a profile of activity that helps me locate more specific information, and more sources ripe for scouting. But it can be so much more interesting to see websites as prompts that ask artists to articulate points of connection, to organize their latent thoughts about people, places, and ideas. Although decisions about website content often feel predetermined by industry norms (what to write in your bio) and expediency (your highest-res photos and audio), they’re ultimately decisions you make about yourself in a way that is less mediated than a pre-concert talk, an interview, or program notes. Listeners — especially musicologists — crave this deeper understanding of the musicians we engage with because it helps us make better sense of how artists see themselves as generating meaning.
In my research, I’m lucky to have built deep relationships with a few musicians through in-person interaction: listening to them speak and joke, and speaking and joking right back. But practicality limits the details that listeners can glean from afar: how much context-rich information is really accessible to someone living 100, 200, or 300 miles away? If you think it’s appropriate to engage listeners who exist outside of your in-person community, artist websites lay important groundwork, imperfect though they may be.
Tim Igel: Yes, with plenty of caveats
With the constant shifting landscape of the internet, it’s reasonable to wonder whether having a website is still worthwhile. Many of our current platforms may seem like a permanent and safe place to host your one-stop landing page, but we’ve seen recent examples such as X/Twitter impacting artists’ work and livelihood. At the end of the day, social media and streaming companies don’t have any responsibility to you or your work.
I’m the Manager of Recordings and Advertising at innova Recordings, and a core tenet of our work is that artists own their art in perpetuity; this means retaining their masters and copyright. In a similar way, websites can provide you with more control over not only your work and your artistic narrative, but the stability of your online presence itself. A website can be your personal corner of the internet that you curate, manage, and even build, if you want to learn to code. But you should also consider the infrastructure and services you choose for your website and check their stability and your control over them, as well.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t use social media – just be aware of the issues and ephemerality of it. Rather than having your entire online presence in one place, you might consider using multiple platforms in addition to your website. While nothing lasts forever, it’s a good practice to be mindful of how you’re treating your work online as an artist – and who knows, a website might be an even better one-stop shop in the future.
Yaz Lancaster: Not necessarily
I am a transdisciplinary artist who creates as a performer, composer, and writer in a wide range of genres, and I personally have a website that houses all the work I do across mediums. While I have one myself and think traditional websites can be a valuable tool for artists, they might not be completely necessary these days. There are many ways for artists to create digital portfolios and connect with far-reaching audiences and collaborators without the fees and maintenance of a personal website. Many artists have been successful in showcasing work on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter/X, and TikTok. The majority of musicians and sound artists don’t use their websites to host audio – it’s likely being embedded from other sites like SoundCloud, Bandcamp, or YouTube, which can be more than enough in terms of building an audio portfolio.
However, it is a bit trickier for multidisciplinary artists who work in a wide variety of mediums to rely on a single platform. Simple and free-to-use landing pages like Linktree or Carrd can host important links to pieces, events, and contact information without building an entire multi-page site. For those who wish to be more expressive than character limits allow, or without the threat of growing internet censorship (either explicitly, or partially through “shadowbanning”), a newsletter or subscription-based platform containing work updates may be a good route, with an opportunity to monetize if using alternatives like Substack, Patreon, or Ko-fi.
This article is part of ACF’s digital media expansion to empower artists, made possible by funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Learn more at kf.org and follow @knightfdn on social media.
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN is an editorially-independent program of the American Composers Forum, funded with generous donor and institutional support. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and may not represent the views of ICIYL or ACF.
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