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Nightlife & Hospitality

Streaming HubHeadless ShopifyAI Fan Experience

Musician, Band & DJ Website Development

Your Merch Revenue Gets Split With Big Cartel — Before You See It

6,800

Monthly Searches

Musician + band + DJ + artist website

28K

Artist Profiles

Built on our DA architecture

Transaction Fees

Headless Shopify above plan cost

$5K

Starting Price

Full platform, not a template

What A Custom Musician Website Actually Does — And What Linktree Won't

Your album drops at midnight. A fan in Berlin types your name into Google and lands on a streaming hub pulling Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, and Bandcamp into a single custom player — not four awkward widgets fighting for space. Tour dates auto-populate from Bandsintown or Songkick, filterable by city so someone in Austin sees Austin shows. Your merch shop runs on headless Shopify with variant management, inventory tracking, and zero transaction fees beyond the platform cost. The EPK sits password-protected for labels and agents: bio, hi-res press photos, rider, tech specs. Your newsletter captures email to a list you own — not Instagram's 2% organic reach. The lyrics archive gives every song its own indexable page, so you rank for your catalogue instead of handing that traffic to Genius. And for established acts, a Claude-powered fan experience answers catalogue questions, recommends tracks by mood, recalls your full touring history. A Linktree says you're not quite there yet. A proper site says you're treating this like a business.

Waar projecten falen

Look, if a label A&R or a booking agent Googles your name and the first result is a Linktree -- that's a problem They'll move on. Genuinely. It takes about four seconds. A proper website with an EPK, press coverage, and a streaming hub is the professional standard in 2024, and it signals that you're treating this like a business. A Linktree says you're not quite there yet.

Relying entirely on social media reach is honestly one of the most common and most expensive mistakes I see artists make Instagram reaches maybe 2% of your followers on a good day. Your email list? It reaches 100% of subscribers. Every tour announcement, every merch drop, every album release should hit your list first -- before it goes anywhere else. And unlike a social platform, nobody can take that list away from you.

Big Cartel charges 5% transaction fees Sounds small until you do the math. Headless Shopify runs $39-399/mo depending on the plan, and the transaction fees above that? Zero. So the real kicker is this: if your merch revenue crosses $780/mo -- which for most gigging artists isn't a huge bar -- Shopify has already paid for itself. Big Cartel made sense in 2012. It doesn't make as much sense now.

Sending press photos and bio as email attachments is -- and I say this kindly -- what unsigned acts do A password-protected EPK page with hi-res assets, multiple bio lengths, and a direct booking contact is what the industry expects. One link. Everything they need. No digging through a Gmail thread to find the right JPEG.

Every song title you've ever released is a search query someone's typing right now Fans search for lyrics constantly. If your site doesn't have them, Genius ranks for your song name instead of you -- and they keep that traffic, that ad revenue, that fan relationship. A lyrics archive flips that. You rank for your own catalogue. Pretty straightforward, and genuinely underused by most artists.

Compliance

Streaming Hub

Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, and Bandcamp -- all four -- embedded inside one custom-designed player. Not a row of mismatched widgets that each look like they came from a different decade. One clean audio experience with album artwork, a proper track listing, and direct streaming links. It sounds like a small thing. In practice it changes how fans actually interact with your music on the site.

Tour Dates & Ticket Links

Tour dates auto-pull from Bandsintown or Songkick via API, so you're not manually updating three different places every time something changes. Or manage them directly from the admin dashboard if you prefer control. Either way, there's a map view of upcoming shows and direct ticket links through Dice, Eventbrite, or an embedded Stripe checkout -- no redirecting fans through four different platforms just to buy a ticket.

Headless Shopify Merch

Full Shopify ecommerce built into your Next.js site -- not bolted on, not a widget dropped into a corner of the page. Real variant management for size, colour, vinyl colour, whatever you need. Inventory tracking. Proper shipping zones. And -- worth saying again -- zero transaction fees above the plan cost. Not Big Cartel. Not a half-baked plugin.

Password-Protected EPK

Your EPK isn't a single bio and a couple of JPEGs. Done right, it's bio copy in short, medium, and long versions depending on what the publication needs. Hi-res press photos at actual download quality. Press quotes. The tech rider. A stage plot. Direct booking contact. All of it behind one password link you send out in about ten seconds.

Lyrics & Liner Notes Archive

Every song gets its own page -- lyrics, production credits, musicians, the story behind the track if you want to include it. But here's why this actually matters beyond the content: it's programmatic SEO. Every song title becomes an indexable page you own, ranking in search results that currently belong to Genius or AZLyrics.

AI Fan Experience

A Claude-powered chat embedded directly in your site, trained on your full catalogue, touring history, and FAQ. Fans ask which album to start with, what a specific lyric means, or which song fits a late-night drive. And it answers like a knowledgeable fan would -- not like a customer service bot reading from a script.

Wat we bouwen

Stop sending press kits as email attachments like an unsigned act

Password-protected EPK delivers hi-res assets, multiple bio lengths, and booking contact in one link

Quit losing merch revenue to Big Cartel's 5% transaction fees

Headless Shopify merch shop pays for itself after $780/mo in sales with zero transaction fees

End the Instagram algorithm lottery reaching 2% of your followers

Email list reaches 100% of subscribers for every tour announcement and album drop you own

Stop handing lyric search traffic to Genius instead of ranking yourself

Lyrics archive ranks your song titles in search so fans find you, not third-party lyric sites

Eliminate the four-widget chaos of embedding every streaming platform separately

Unified streaming hub pulls Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, Bandcamp into one custom player

Abandon Linktree as your Google result when A&R searches your name

Auto-synced tour dates from Bandsintown or Songkick with map view for fans by city

Ons proces

Artist Identity & Catalogue Audit

Before anything gets designed or built, we map your discography, touring history, press coverage, and commercial goals. Honestly, this is where most of the real work happens. Understanding your brand, your fanbase, and what you actually need the website to do -- that shapes every decision that comes after.

Week 1

Custom Design -- Your Aesthetic

Not a band template with your logo dropped in. A design built around your actual visual identity: the palette from your album artwork, your photography style, typography that fits the genre. And mobile-first throughout -- because most of your fans are finding you on a phone, not a desktop.

Week 2-3

Build -- Streaming, Merch, EPK, Fan Club

The core build covers streaming hub integration, headless Shopify merch, password-protected EPK, lyrics archive, newsletter integration, and tour dates via the Bandsintown API. These aren't optional extras -- they're the foundation of a site that actually does its job.

Week 4-6

AI Fan Experience (Established Acts)

The Claude integration gets trained on your catalogue, your FAQ, and your interview archive -- so it actually knows what it's talking about. Then we test it against real fan queries, tune the tone to match your voice, and make sure it doesn't say anything embarrassing before it goes live.

Week 7

Launch & Management Training

Before launch, you -- or your manager -- get trained on adding tour dates, uploading merch, updating the EPK, and publishing new releases. It's all designed to be manageable without a developer on call. And we establish a post-launch SEO baseline so you know where you're starting from.

Week 8

Next.jsSupabaseVercelShopify HeadlessStripeBandsintown APIAnthropic ClaudeConvertKit

Veelgestelde vragen

How much does a musician or band website cost?

Artist websites range from $5,000 to $30,000 depending on what's actually being built. A starter build -- streaming hub, tour dates, EPK, newsletter integration -- runs $5-8K. A full platform for an established act, with headless Shopify merch, fan club, AI experience, and lyrics archive, lands in the $15-30K range. The gap reflects real differences in scope, not padding.

What is an EPK and why does it need password protection?

An EPK -- Electronic Press Kit -- is the professional alternative to emailing attachments and Dropbox folders to every journalist and agent who asks. It contains your bio, hi-res press photos, press quotes, rider, tech specs, and booking contact. Password protection means you send one link, they access everything they need, and nothing gets lost in a thread. It's honestly one of the highest-ROI pages on the whole site.

Why headless Shopify for merch instead of Big Cartel?

Big Cartel caps you at 500 products on paid plans and takes transaction fees on every sale. Headless Shopify removes both of those problems -- zero transaction fees above the plan cost, unlimited products, and real variant management for size, colour, vinyl colour, whatever your merch actually needs. Plus inventory tracking across multiple items. It's a meaningful difference once you're doing real merch volume.

What is the AI-powered fan experience?

A Claude-powered chat built into your site and trained on everything: your full discography, lyrics, touring history, influences, and the questions fans actually ask. Someone wants to know which album to start with. Someone else wants to know what you meant by a specific line in a 2018 B-side. Or which song to put on at 2am. It answers like a knowledgeable fan would -- not a chatbot, not a FAQ page, something that actually feels like talking to someone who cares about the music.

Musician Websites from $5,000

Streaming hub. Headless Shopify merch. EPK. Fan club. AI experience for established acts.

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