 So one of the dumbest things about the internet is if you've ever said something in the past and then some circumstances make you change your mind, someone will hold up your past statement to say that you're an absolute moron who no one should listen to. Since the participants of the internet are people who love nuance and are always acting in good faith. Well since I'm not a psychic but it seems like every girl in Brooklyn on Tinder I swipe on these days is, I can't always see changes coming and in this video I have to do an about face on a subject as the rules of the game have changed. So what I'm talking about is for years musicians have flooded my forum discord in the comments of this YouTube channel with questions about what musicians should do for a website. I have mostly said, don't waste your time, money or attention on a website. But that's no longer the case. So in this video I'm going to discuss how musicians should see the need for a website. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fan base from zero to 10,000 fans and this is Muse Formation. Okay so let's talk about why musicians like to make websites. Now most of the time I see musicians make one, it's they want to tell their story in hopes music business types, you know, managers, A&R, booking agents or whoever will read their story and become so enamored with that dumb story of how the band met at AA or whatever it is they think is so cool that the manager will not only sign them but also shower them with compliments on the self-absorbed story that they read at least four other versions of before. And listen, I get this instinct, but I'll tell you straight up, up to the extremely cursed EPKs that exist in this world, an artist's website is everyone in the music business's least favorite way to hear an artist's story. A YouTube video, a vlog, Spotify bio, that's nice to the point or even a TikTok is all more appealing than scrolling through some website. But another reason a musician has a website that is actually a good reason is they are SEO challenged and what I mean by that is even though they have some traction and are getting some streams, if you Google their name, it doesn't come up. Grabbing a domain and putting up a website that links your Spotify, YouTube and socials is super smart and a great way to start correcting this problem, since I know a lot of you don't consider this since I see how utterly stupid the names you use for your music are. But if people can't find you in a Google search or a voice search on Siri or Alexa, well, you're going to have a harder time building your fan base. If you want to go deeper on that, down in the description or on the screen right now, I have linked a video I made on naming your music project. So I do get if you want to have a website for that reason. But it's time to get real and this is something I have to impress upon musicians every day when I do consulting calls. Everything you devote your energy and money to can be going to something more effective and especially when you're starting out, having a website isn't a sign of professionalism, it's a sign that you threw money at something. And this is not where you need to devote your attention until you need to accomplish a few things. And in all honesty, until you have a lot of attention, this is just a waste of time, attention and resources, and especially money if you're throwing a grand or more at a website instead of a music video or a better recording of your song. Okay, so to understand a few things, let's talk about the services that musicians commonly build their website on. So the worst website building platform, or as they are more professionally known, a CMS I see musicians use is Wix. I feel like these always look bad and honestly, if you're going to spend time and money to build a website, if it also makes a bad impression by looking tacky, you're really messing up. These feel cheap and there's been times where I've looked up musicians' websites and they have goddamn Google ads on these Wix sites sometimes. And getting an ad when you're looking to learn about a musician is probably one of the worst impressions possible to make out a new fan or a team member. The next one I see people use a lot is WordPress. I'm actually a big fan of WordPress websites, as they are the most agile, good for SEO and easy to use if you're going to do something complex. I build all of my business websites with it. But particularly what's good about WordPress is if you're going to do some high-level marketing, this is the best CMS to build with. Whenever I've worked marketing campaigns, we need a place to host a page where some programmer is going to make us a script where after like 10,000 people tweet, and so HypeBeast is the non-king. It will then unlock their new song, I Kissed My Science Teacher, at a ska show. WordPress is ideal to host it, as the others just don't have the agile capabilities. In general, if you want to do complex things with a website, there's very few people who would disagree that WordPress is where you should build it. I mean, literally most of the internet is built on WordPress. Especially if you want to get into complex SEO or tweaking of layouts, it's where it's at. But another popular one I see people build on is Squarespace. And look, these sites look good, even great sometimes. But for the money they charge, there's a better option, I think, which finally brings me to my recommendation. So as I said, the game just changed. And in my opinion, that happened when Spotify announced that if you sell your merch through Shopify, you can now put three designs in your Spotify page and manage what designs are up instead of having to do this with the extremely cursed partner Spotify had before, who was called Merchbar, who inflated prices to a level that was horrific and generally made everyone I know who dealt with the miserable, as this Spotify integration was just a massive easy win that totally failed. Anyway, so now that Shopify is partnered with the streaming site that has a name that's way too close for comfort, this to me means this is the choice for building a website. But I know a lot of you are like WTF. I thought Shopify was a place where you sell things. You are correct there, chief, but it's also a CMS that works for building websites that look great, rank high on SEO. And honestly, it's just a great easy to use experience for your users and for people to buy merch from you. I'm decent with web design, but if I'm being honest, WordPress is a bit much for my skills. But I've built a good looking site or three on Squarespace. And I find that Shopify gives you all the ease of Squarespace and the functionality of WordPress. But the other real benefit, of course, is that it's the best site online for selling merchandise and whether that's integrating in print on demand services like Printful or Printify, I know the supposed tech geniuses who are supposed to believe have amazing brains sure aren't very creative with their names for their sites. Anyway, whether you want to fulfill your merch orders yourself or use print on demand fulfillment, all the options are there with rates similar to what you'd pay for Squarespace or paying someone to build a WordPress site. Plus you get all these added benefits. And to get into it, I want to point you to the banned spirit box whose site is built on Shopify. It really is a great looking site and functions as a website in an incredible way. And if you look up top, they have all their socials and streaming sites linked and the table of contents is super clear. So you can get to know where you want to go if you want to go deeper and find any relevant information on them. One of the other reasons I love this is since integrating merch sales in a website builder like WordPress or Squarespace or Wix was always so annoying. But in Shopify, it's so seamless and easy to get the best buying experience on the internet. Seriously, the reason everyone in their mother has switched to Shopify is the buying experience is excellent and it makes it super easy to deal with customers unlike so many other merch sales formats. And I know I'm gushing a lot here, so I have to make it clear I've never been paid by Shopify to say anything nice about them, but they've made my life so much easier since I switched to the merch companies I've built to them and I'm really honestly just grateful. Now I want to be clear, I still think unless you're getting some traction, it's probably not a good use of your time to make a merch store. But if merch sales are coming in and there's interest in you, Shopify now seems like the best option since it's always been a great website tool and a way to sell merch. But with this Spotify integration, the choice is clear that this is how you can get some funding for your music and turn fans into walking advertisements with your merch. I should also say if you do have a Shopify store, connecting it to Spotify is as simple as going in your Spotify for Rs page, clicking the profile button, then the merch button and connecting them and choosing the three designs you'd like and then you're all set. Okay, so on this channel, this is the type of stuff we discuss. So if you're interested in this, you should definitely like, subscribe and most of all get notified so you don't miss crucial videos I post for helping you level up building a fan base. I answer every comment below that doesn't ask why my nose is so stuffed up. So if you have a question, hit the comments. On the screen now is a video on how to grow your fan base from zero to 10,000 fans or how to get your music noticed or how to blow up on Spotify in 2022. Click and keep learning. Thanks for watching.