Band Websites

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

I am occasionally asked for a ballpark price for creating a professional website for a band with the features they need and the a facility to manage it themselves. Ballpark figures are usually difficult without a defined project scope, but as band websites often have similar requirements I can usually get a good idea of what is needed and give an answer based on a few options.

Unfortunately my reply is often followed by a stunned silence as the cost of doing it properly and keeping my business in profit tends to frighten people off, especially when they realise that on top of the design & build cost they also have to pay an annual fee for hosting either to me as a hosting reseller or to another hosting company.

As band sites often have similar aims and requirements, I'm thinking it could be worth providing a platform where band's can have professional looking website with the functionality they need and customisable design, but without the cost of a fully bespoke project.

I first had the seed of an idea to do something like this following a discussion with Si O-G. Sadly I never had the chance to ask him whether he would like to be involved in it, but I hope that in some small way this would be able to stand as a tribute to the selfless help he has given people over the years as when I think of band websites I often think "what would Si do?".

My idea is to create a platform based on a content management system loaded with a custom theme and selectable child themes which change the colour scheme and look & feel. Every band has its own personality & style which it should be able to get across in the design of its website, so I would put together varied styles to be sure of having something for everyone, and also provide features to enable people to further customise their design without needing to know all the techie stuff.

As standard each band's site will use a subdomain URL (such as [url="http://bandname.blahblahwhatever.co.uk)"]http://bandname.blahblahwhatever.co.uk)[/url], but it would be possible to provide an upgrade to allow people to use their own domain and/or order a domain to use (such as [url="http://www.bandname.co.uk)"]http://www.bandname.co.uk)[/url].

Features I'm thinking about including to make this as useful & flexible as possible would be
[list]
[*]When first set up, several pages will exist with default placeholder text, which can be replaced with the real text and then new pages created in the CMS
[*]A gig listing system
[*]Band News / Blog / Journal with tags & categories
[*]Selectable Display fonts for Headings and Band Name in Masthead
[*]upload custom site background to replace default in theme
[*]upload custom logo to replace band name in masthead
[*]Homepage image slider with animated transitions</li>
[*]Photo Gallery with lightbox display (when you click on a thumbnail a large version of the pic appears)
[*]Dropdown menu which is automatically updated whenever a page is added
[*]embedded MP3 players
[*]Site search
[*]Contact page
[*]Various widgets which can be added to the sidebar - eg latest tweets, pic gallery, upcoming gigs etc
[*]Youtube/Vimeo video embedding
[*]Social Media share links on each page for driving traffic from facebook, myspace, twitter etc
[*]"For Dummies" type printable pdf manual, plus online version covering all admin &amp; editing functions plus content tips
[/list]

Other features which may or may not be included, or could be offered as part of the premium package or as addons
[list]
[*]Own Domain Name
[*]eCommerce to sell Merchandise / CDs / MP3
[*]Forum to build a community of fans
[*]A service to create additional custom theme, background graphic and/or logo if a band wants one
[*]A service to populate the site with the bands initial content as if I'm creating a bespoke site
[/list]

Issues I will have to address would be things like:
[list]
[*]Getting a good balance between too few & too many options
[*]Keeping the admin as simple and jargon-free as possible without sacrificing flexibility
[*]Even though the plan will probably be for online documentation and a printable manual to be available, I won't kid myself that people will always think of actually looking at it, so I could set up a support forum to provide support to users and hopefully users would help each other out with common issues they may encounter. I could maybe provide a user-to-user marketplace for hooking people up with their custom logo graphics & backgrounds in the forum
[/list]

I'm currently looking at this as a skunkworks project alongside my full time freelance business at the moment. I'm in the early stages, but I should have a something ready for testing within a few weeks and once I've done some initial testing with some dummy sites in varied styles (I'm jotting down some fake band names for this), I'll probably be looking for beta testers to have a play with it &amp; provide feedback and ideas. In the meantime any comments or ideas would be welcome.

I would be interested in hearing peoples' views on this idea:

Does this sound like a daft idea or do you think people would find it useful?

With a target market of pub bands in mind, what price ranges would make this seem like

[list]
[*]Too cheap so the perception is that it can't be any good
[*]a bargain
[*]Too high for people to consider?
[/list]

What additional features (non essential to the standard package) might add value in a premium version?

This project is at a very early stage, so nothing is set in stone, I have a name for this & registered the domain name for branding it and will disclose that when I have something worth looking at. I want to provide a service people will enjoy using and get a lot of value from, so any input from people here which would help with those goals will be most welcome.

Thanks for reading this rather lengthy post and, to anyone who replies to the thread, thanks for your input.

[Earbrass]

[duncan bannatyne]
What would make your product different from those already in the market-place like MySpace or ReverbNation?
[/duncan bannatyne]

[xilddx]

[quote name='Earbrass' post='958439' date='Sep 16 2010, 03:38 PM'][duncan bannatyne]
What would make your product different from those already in the market-place like MySpace or ReverbNation?
[/duncan bannatyne][/quote]

[thisnameistaken]

I think if you're going to develop a CMS it seems silly to limit your potential market to just small-time bands, who are likely to be always skint anyway.

[obbm]

Another ready-made platform is [url="http://bandzoogle.com/"]Bandzoogle[/url]

[Dubs]

Struggling to see the USP over myspace et al. Having said that, it looks like you've got some good ideas. Seems like usability is key for this though.

[charic]

Sounds interesting, almost a config page style system.

Initial thoughts are the idea of a low cost or free version (with advertising on the page so you can make so money that way?)
Mid Priced version should have less / no advertisement, limited songs, limited pages, no video, no merch etc with the option of buying addons
Full version, your full spec as it stands plus extra support for the site.

Feel free to PM me for banter if you fancy as this sounds really interesting and I'd like to get my head around some more web design

[mcgraham]

[quote][duncan bannatyne]
What would make your product different from those already in the market-place like MySpace or ReverbNation?
[/duncan bannatyne][/quote]

+1 That's not such a silly point.

Also, what sort of protection could you obtain for your idea? Thinking from a protection point of view, what is to stop other already established and popular networks with similar (but not identical platforms) adding features to offer almost identical services?

[matski]

[quote name='Jean-Luc Pickguard' post='958419' date='Sep 16 2010, 03:21 PM']Unfortunately my reply is often followed by a stunned silence as the cost of doing it properly and keeping my business in profit tends to frighten people off.[/quote]
This is the curse of the professional designer, as opposed to the generic 'bloke I know who said he'd sort out a website'...

Sorts out the wheat from the chaff, though eh?

[spinynorman]

We looked at the professional route when we revamped our site. The web designers we approached appeared to have reasonable IT skills, but not much in the way of design background. The sites we were shown as references were either badly designed, or totally unsuitable for a band. In the end I downloaded a free copy of NetObjects Fusion Essentials and did it myself.

The problem is I think that the website template, content management stuff is the easy bit. It's been commoditised already by software, Myspace, Joomla, Wordpress, etc. How do you make your site stand out? - not by basing it on a template. One local band has a friend who is a professional graphic artist for a comic publisher, and another who is a semi-pro photographer. They have standout graphics and photos and really none of the rest of it matters.

If you could find a cheap easy way to do customised creative content, we'd bite your hand off. Somehow I doubt that's possible.

[charic]

[quote name='spinynorman' post='958624' date='Sep 16 2010, 06:13 PM']We looked at the professional route when we revamped our site. The web designers we approached appeared to have reasonable IT skills, but not much in the way of design background. The sites we were shown as references were either badly designed, or totally unsuitable for a band. In the end I downloaded a free copy of NetObjects Fusion Essentials and did it myself.

The problem is I think that the website template, content management stuff is the easy bit. It's been commoditised already by software, Myspace, Joomla, Wordpress, etc. How do you make your site stand out? - not by basing it on a template. One local band has a friend who is a professional graphic artist for a comic publisher, and another who is a semi-pro photographer. They have standout graphics and photos and really none of the rest of it matters.

If you could find a cheap easy way to do customised creative content, we'd bite your hand off. Somehow I doubt that's possible.[/quote]

That last bit...

What do you mean?

[JTUK]

I have to say that most bands websites are pretty dire, IMV. If that is the standard of presentation at that level, then how are they going to be at gigs.. I'd wager the same, like as not.

You have to be cost-effective but any band with a myspace page ought to seriously think again, IMO.

[Mykesbass]

Would it not be more what the bands want to get back from the site - if it is bookings a function bands then optimisation would be a key issue, pub bands would probably just want something nice they could refer people to, and if it was for building a fanbase for an originals band then surely there would be other criteria such as social networking?

IMO, I do think it is nicer to have a website with it's own unique domain name rather than (or in addition to) Reverbnation/Myspace etc.

[mep]

Lemonrock

£10 a year (I think), job done. But you didn't want to hear that did you?

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

[quote name='mep' post='958861' date='Sep 16 2010, 09:49 PM']Lemonrock

£10 a year (I think), job done. But you didn't want to hear that did you?[/quote]
If that is all people want then fine, that's why I started this thread as a bit of informal market research to gauge whether there is a market. If most people in bands don't know or care about the differences between a profile on a social network and a website, then perhaps there isn't much of a market for this. Better I find out now.

Thanks for all the replies so far chaps.

[spinynorman]

[quote name='charic' post='958632' date='Sep 16 2010, 06:20 PM']That last bit...

What do you mean?[/quote]

The difficult thing about creating a great looking website isn't website layout and content management, it's graphic design, photography, video.

The people that I've come across claiming to be website designers always talk about the technical stuff - updating gig lists, streaming mp3s etc, so what they really are is website builders. Having dealt with the technical building job, they're then looking to me to provide things like a logo, photos, video. If, as is generally the case, what I can do is mediocre, the site will still look crap, however well it runs technically.

What I would like is for someone to say - I'll design a band logo and a theme for the site, take some good pictures of the band and build it all into a working site for, say £250. However, I am realistic enough to think it is unlikely that anyone could do that and make a living.

Edited September 17, 2010 by spinynorman

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

[quote name='spinynorman' post='959759' date='Sep 17 2010, 06:21 PM']The difficult thing about creating a great looking website isn't website layout and content management, it's graphic design, photography, video.[/quote]
Making a website look great is only part of it. Usability, accessibility and visibility to search engines is important. Certain SEO principles are a no-brainer but it's amazing how many people don't bother with alt tags, unique page titles, meta descriptions, correct hierarchy of headings etc - usually the same people who build something fugly using tables for layout with spacer gifs,

[quote]...Having dealt with the technical building job, they're then looking to me to provide things like a logo, photos, video. If, as is generally the case, what I can do is mediocre, the site will still look crap, however well it runs technically.[/quote]
Descent designers will ask you if you have these things already and supply them if not. They would need to be budget for them though. Its not within a web designer's remit to be a photographer - that's a totally different skillset, so a photographer would be brought in and would need to be paid.

[quote]What I would like is for someone to say - I'll design a band logo and a theme for the site, take some good pictures of the band and build it all into a working site for, say £250.[/quote]
At that price, a supplied logo as part of the package would need to be very simple, the budget wouldn't allow for much more than the band name attractively rendered in an appropriate typeface possibly with a few tweaks or embellishments, but if a band aren't already using a logo, what are they putting on their posters & flyers? If a logo is designed as part of the web package would the band expect a pdf version as well to put on their printed stuff?

A web designer wouldn't normally take the photos. They could supply a photographer, but at a cost. For business sites, licensed stock photos are used a lot and they can be as cheap as £15 or so for a dozen decent pics at the ideal resolution, but obviously that isn't appropriate for a band site. If all you have are live snapshots taken by mates with point & shoots, any designer who knows how to use photoshop properly should be able to improve your photos with cropping, colour & contrast correction etc - or even something funky like turning them into cartoons, paintings or polaroids.

[quote]However, I am realistic enough to think it is unlikely that anyone could do that and make a living.[/quote]
Awwwww! If you hadn't have said that I would have asked whether you wanted the moon on a stick

With my system built, it could probably be done within the budget you mention (but with simple logo, & customer supplied pics.)

Once the customer sends text content/pics/mp3s/links to youtube vids and answers a few questions - the aims of the website, how they want the site to look, any specific colours & style - dark/light/clean/grunge/cool/professional/60s/70s/80s/classic/modern/retro/colourful/monochome/metallic/textured/flat etc

Then the steps I would take to create the site would be:
[list]
[*]set up the site nuts & bolts (mostly automated)
[*]select child theme for colour scheme & layout
[*]create & upload custom site background
[*]create & upload custom logo background
[*]edit pics & upload for display on pages, image slideshow & gallery
[*]upload audio
[*]copy/paste page content, add pics & media to pages
[*]SEO stuff
[*]test & launch
[*]send customer user logon details & pdf manual to update content, add gigs etc
[/list]

Using the system I am building to streamline the design & build process, I would hope it would be possible for a professional, unique & blummin' nice site build to be achieved within half a day from receiving the customer questionnaire, text content & photos. If so it could possibly come close to or within the price point you mention for a full setup & build service. I think I might prefer this approach rather than having people do their own set-up.

Hosting, domain registration & support would need to be factored in - maybe the first year could be included in the base price & subsequent years half that?

[charic]

So you have set layouts/themes to select from and they would provide you with the content for any particular work aswell as somekind of description?

Semi-automated almost

[spinynorman]

Firstly, please don't take this the wrong way, I think there's potential here, I'm just trying to help work out what it is.

A website builder service aimed specifically at bands is a good idea. The only problem is it's a lot easier for you to tell me how much work it is for you (listing what you will do) than to tell me how much value there is for me. The site will be up quickly, it will be easy to maintain and it will meet all the requirements of good website design. Ok, but will it rock? Will it get us more gigs? Will it get more people to gigs? That's what I'd pay money for. More hits off Google isn't enough.

"Web designers don't usually ...". Can't argue with that, but maybe they should. Or maybe put the work out to other people, but in such a way that it can be done at a reasonable fixed price. For example, fix my crappy homemade logo and band name banner for £x. Edit 10 of my reasonable but not stunning pictures for £y. Use the same pics and banner to create a poster pdf I can give straight to Prontaprint £z. Maybe even edit some of my uninspiring text so people read it and want to hire us £zz.

It's late, the moon's drifting out of reach. I just think with just the website build, you are competing with Myspace, lemonrock etc and it'll be hard to make it pay. Add a few higher value options, that they can't do, potentially you have a business.

[TimR]

What I would do is chose an already cheap do-it yourself web design service. As others have said there are loads out there. Maybe buy into a sub-domain of one of those. Set up the web-space with their band name and then "sub-let" the web-space to the band for £x. They can then upload their own graphics chose a layout and do the basic stuff that anyone can do themselves. As you say most people have JPGs of logos and photos.

Once they've done that then you work your magic to correct all the basic errors that everyone makes; photoshop their images, smarten up logo, adjust the page layout, pick a decent font, add meta tags and do all the specialist stuff that makes their site stand out and for google to find it. Charge them half a day labour to do that bit. Job done.

[purpleblob]

I've been waiting until I had some time to reply to your original post as this project is similar to something I had wondered about doing myself a few years back, although I was primarily aiming at allowing the sale of people's/bands music on a single site thus allowing unsigned artists a way to earn an income (if they so desired) or an audience for their music. Unfortunately illness and a lack of money mean't I never took this further and now I simply don't have the time (or inclination) to do something this big. Anyway...

I think you have some good ideas but there are certainly a few similar types of sites out there. You would have some big competition with the likes of MySpace, but then MySpace is a little too general in some ways. I mean I have real trouble finding anything in MySpace (then again I don't use MySpace much so maybe I'm doing something wrong ). On top of this you have sites like www.unsigned.com, I seem to recall there was a really good site called garageband or the likes (which seems to have been eaten up by MySpace) and ofcourse there are other sites out there. Some I've heard of others such as lemonrock I'd never heard of. Then there sites like www.artonearth.com which are entirely sales based.

So if you have an interest in doing something like this, and can cover the development costs initially then why not give it a go, whilst being first to market is often best, it's not always going to guarantee success. The fact that so many similar sites exist suggests that nobody as 100% cornered the market yet. If you were to offer this service to bands who approach you for web site development then maybe you could refine your ideas or find that word of mouth takes over but you would really need to build momentum asap and get the numbers joining to make the site viable.

My biggest concern for you is if you want to earn money from this then what's your business model ? If you want to earn from people building a presence via your site/system you will have a lot of trouble when people can easily do something free on others sites (such as MySpace, and MySpace have the numbers already). Obviously if you're offering a simple free service with costs for enhanced functionality then that may be worth it to those bands who require the enhanced service but can you guarantee that you'll get anyone taking up the enhanced options and developing such a site is not cheap if you take into account what you'd normally charge for such work - but again, if you can cover this then why not give it a shot.

Personally I think you'd make a massive mistake if your target this only at "pub bands", I would aim it at all artists. I mean if I were a 17 year old budding dance music producer I'd still like a way to get an audience and the features you mention for a site would be just as useful to me as a "pub" band or any other type of band.

Look, you have competition, you know it, everyone knows it. But if you think back not too long ago google didn't exist and it seemed that yahoo, alta vista and the likes pretty much had the search world sown up but look at who's the top search engine now so there's always room for thinks to be shaken up !

EDIT: Apologies for the long post.

Edited September 18, 2010 by purpleblob

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

A few interesting points raised - thanks for everything so far chaps.

Yes the target market should be broader than pub bands and every type should be catered for.
I'm sure function bands will have different reasons for wanting a site than a pub band and different requirements, so those will need to be identified and addressed.

Do bands who use a MySpace or Lemonrock account consider it their website? My perception is that a Wedding band certainly wouldn't, and neither will a lot of other bands. Maybe I'm wrong though, just as some people with bicycles don't need a car. I think what I would be offering will be sufficiently different to the social media services in that the main branding will be the band's own.

If a band wants to use the site to build a following and get gigs, the best website in the world won't do it for them, but if they use it as an integral part of their marketing efforts - ie web address on all posters & flyers, cards CDs, letters, forum posts etc it should help multiply those efforts. Double opt-in email Newsletters and maybe an onsite fan forum (if they can develop a fanbase) may be useful as well on the site to make the fans feel like a community.

[bigjohn]

This is something I've thought about a lot.

I've drawn the conclusion that most bands don't make any money and are loathed to any spend money at all on a website. Especially when there's facebook / myspace / reverbnation etc etc...

Signed bands have management companies that have contacts with design agencies who do their websites. From the couple I've been approached by - there's not a great deal of money in this. They want top end and want it virtually or totally free. They expect you to monetise the kudos gleaned from helping make their band a success, or from creating the website for an already successful band. It's very similar to the fashion industry in this way. It's vanity work.

Function bands is where your market would be, like any small business they should be willing to pay for website that pays itself by facilitating more / better paid gigs.

I think you should try to estimate just how many bands there are out there that would benefit - and what percentage of those bands you'd have to get on board to make it worthwhile doing and then asking if that percentage is realistic.

[TimR]

I spent a morning exchanging emails with Old Git. In that morning he transformed our website from an invisible, hard to navigate, and complicated site to a site that featured on the first page of a search and was easier and more intuitive to navigate. It looked professional and we got business from it.

The rest of the band didn't see the importance of even having a website other than having a site with a few songs and pics that we could put on our business cards for people to show their friends.

After I left another member took over running the site - he re-built it using a template provided by the webspace provider. His version is here - [url="http://www.revival.cd2.com"]www.revival.cd2.com[/url] There is so much wrong with it from a design point of view - spelling only being one of them. (Hope the new bass player's not reading this )

But if bands can't see what is wrong with it and think that this is acceptable I'm not sure that they will pay for a good web site.

Really you need to ask them how much they were expecting to pay. I think £250 max is likely to be the answer (not a lot more than a reasonable demo or photoshoot would cost) So work out how much work you are willing to do for that.

Maybe you should have several packages ready, with examples, for when you are next asked £250, £500, £1000, and bespoke?

Edited September 19, 2010 by TimR