Getting your band online is the single most important piece of marketing in today’s music world. The web represents your band to all the “maybe-fans.” They may have heard of your band from a friend, or maybe saw you on a favorite club’s schedule. They decide to hop onto your website to see what the buzz is about. This is where you can gain or lose the interest of the “maybe-fan.” A fast, clean web presence can show a lot about your band. This shows that your band is motivated, organized, and most of all that you are dedicated to providing your fans with the most recent info.

The Internet is growing leaps and bounds every day. Like most bands, your site may be on a free web host like Tripod (www.tripod.com), or GeoCities (www.geocities.com). Three years ago this was simply the best way to get your band online without breaking the bank. In today’s web hosting market, competition is tough and rates are down right cheap. Every band can afford a good host to deliver the pages fast and reliably. Good web hosts can be found for $15/month or less; that’s about $3/month per band member.

Getting your own domain name is just as important as putting your bands name on your CD. A www.MyRockBand.com web address brings you to the next level with most web users; it’s easy for fans to remember, and it’s short enough to throw on marketing material like stickers and shirts. Owning your own domain name means owning your own email as well. A custom email like Jay@MyRockBand.com shows a lot about a band, and it's easy to remember compared to Jayfluffy4567@hotmail.com. Prices have dropped by 75% over the last few years. Domain names used to sell for $35 per year. These days you can pick up a .com, .net, or .org name for $8.95/year at Go Daddy (www.godaddy.com).

Getting a good web host is an important step. Beware the lemon! Some deals seem too good to be true, and they probably are. Like any product, you need to do your homework! But, in today’s fast paced world, most of us don’t have time to do our homework, so here is a simple test I like to use when picking a web company to work with: Find a place you like, then try to find their contact information on the site. If this takes more than 30 seconds, move on. If you find the contact information, send them a quick question about their service via email. If they take longer than 24 hours to reply, move on. Give the tech support phone number a call. If you are on hold for longer than 5 minutes, move on.

Customer care should be a deciding factor for web hosting. Chances are you are not a master web geek. You are going to need some help eventually, and if your web host isn’t going to be ready to help, you need to find one that is.

 

Here are recommended figures to use when looking for a host:

Disk Space: 150MB – 300MB

This is the amount of storage that your host should give you for storing images, MP3s, videos, etc.

Bandwidth: 2GB – 5GB

This is the amount of traffic allowed on your site. Traffic increases most when users are downloading music or watching your latest video.

Email Addresses: 10-30

You’ll want a bunch so you can set the band up with personal addresses as well as addresses like info@, paypal@, help@, booking@, etc.

Set up Fee: $0.00

No one charges set up fees anymore. If the host you like is charging, get them to waive the fee. They will.

Web Mail: Yes

Web mail is a tool that allows you to check your band mail from any web browser. It should have all the features of a Hotmail or Yahoo mail account.

24/7 Support: Yes

As musicians, we are night owls. Make sure your tech support is too.

Jay Johnson is a super geek at Hit Catcher Web Hosting. He has been in the underground music scene for 10 years in various bands and record labels. Hit Catcher specializes in web hosting for band and record label sites. www.HitCatcher.com