A solo musician's website: dates, releases, a mailing list and a booking contact
Streaming profiles and social accounts show your music, but they don't let you choose what a promoter sees first, and they don't give you your listeners' email addresses. A small site does both: the next gigs, the latest release, a mailing list and a booking contact, at an address that's yours.
What a solo artist's site is for
For a solo musician the site isn't where people listen; that happens on streaming services. It's where a fan checks whether you're playing near them, where a promoter or venue checks you're real and bookable, and where a journalist finds a photo and a paragraph. Each of those visits is short. Keep the home page to the four things they're after and let everything else sit one click away.
- Next dates. The two or three nearest gigs, with city, venue and a ticket link.
- Latest release. Cover art, a line about it, and links to where to listen.
- Mailing list. One field and a sentence on what you send.
- Booking and press. Who to contact for gigs, and where to find photos and a bio.
Gig dates in a collection
Dates change more than anything else on a musician's site: added shows, sold-out notes, cancellations. Keep them in a CMS collection with typed fields, edited in the dashboard, rather than as text in a page. Each entry has its own address too, which is handy for sharing a single show.
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Date | Friday 9 May 2027 |
| City | Bristol |
| Venue | The Louisiana |
| Ticket link | The promoter's or venue's ticket page |
| Status | On sale, sold out, or cancelled |
| Notes | Support act, age limit, doors time |
Past dates are worth keeping on a separate list. Promoters look at where you've played and how often.
Playing your music: link out
Pages from Anticode's design engine ship with no scripts, so embedded players from streaming services and video sites won't run inside them. That's a real trade-off, and worth being clear about. In practice, most listeners already have a preferred app, so a row of clear links ("Listen on…") to each service often works as well as an embedded player. Video can't play on these pages either, so link live clips out to YouTube or Vimeo. Upload press photos and cover art too; the model sees images and places them.
The mailing list and the booking form
The mailing list is the one channel no platform can throttle. Sign-ups are saved in your dashboard, and the Kit or Mailchimp connector adds each one to your list as it arrives. Write to the list when tickets go on sale in a fan's city; that's when it pays off.
For bookings, a form that asks for the venue or event, date, city and fee range gets you replies you can answer. The built-in contact form asks for a name, email and message, so either ask promoters to include those details in the message, or use a custom form tied to a site function with those fields. Messages can be emailed to you, or posted to a Slack, Discord or Telegram channel shared with a manager or agent. The press kit page guide covers what to put in an electronic press kit.
How Anticode builds it
As a musician website builder, Anticode starts from a description such as "a site for Lior Ben-David, a singer-songwriter in Bristol, with tour dates, the new EP 'Low Tide', a mailing list and a booking contact". The Architect plans it and may ask which look suits the music. Brutalist (Archivo) suits punk and experimental artists, Organic (Figtree) folk and acoustic, Luxury (Jost) jazz or classical, Playful (Fredoka) pop for younger audiences. The template gallery's Static Bloom Records, an indie label site with a brutalist zine look, shows the kind of direction the design systems can take.
Limits
- No embedded streaming players or video. Link out to streaming services and video sites.
- No merch shop. Point a merch button at a Shopify or Gumroad link, or another supported payment provider. There's no cart, stock or shipping.
- No ticketing. Link to the promoter's or venue's ticket page.
- No fan accounts. Send extras to your mailing list instead.
Questions people ask
Do musicians still need a website?
Not to be heard, but to be booked and to own a mailing list. Promoters and press often check a site before replying, and a list is the one audience you keep if a platform changes.
Can I sell music directly from the site?
Through a payment link from a provider such as Gumroad, which can deliver files after purchase. The site holds the link; the provider takes payment.
Is this right for a band?
The same structure works, but bands usually need member pages and a shared contact; the bands guide covers that.
Sources
- Gumroad: Features, checked