Whether you’re an independent artist, a hip hop music producer or simply a music enthusiast, there’s value in building your own hip hop websites. It’s one of the most effective ways of sharing your passion for good music with the world and attracting a following for your work. With Strikingly, creating a hip hop website is easy because there’s no need for you to learn web programming or design to get your site up. It features a wide variety of music website templates that you can customize to reflect your personality and taste. Add a playlist to your music on your Strikingly website through Soundcloud or other third party app integrations. Add your logo and customize your site’s colors and fonts to make it uniquely yours.
Why you need a hip hop web site
A hip hop website helps you build your professional brand and showcase your music to a wider audience. You get to market your talent in a bigger stage and build a following. You can even monetize your website by offering downloadable versions of your music for a price.
There’s a case to be made for submitting your music to bigger hip hop websites. These sites feature a curated list of musicians and music meant for hip hop enthusiasts. They are bigger websites so they understandably have a bigger audience base. The downside is that you will be competing for attention with other hip hop artists. Your work could get lost in a pile of similar music. Building your own hip hop web site to host your work is still the better option.
With that said, here are some best practices to take note of when building hip hop websites:
1. Mobile responsive
Your choice of website builder is crucial because mobile-responsiveness is important for today’s websites. Strikingly’s website templates do not require you to write additional code or enable any setting so your site renders well on mobile devices. The templates are already designed to be mobile responsive.
With Google moving towards a mobile-first indexing policy, you want to make sure that the search engine can find and crawl your site so it gets seen.
2. High quality visuals
In the early days of the internet, you can probably get away with grainy images and low-resolution videos on your website. Nowadays, however, these elements are indicative of a substandard and unprofessional website. With the emergence of stock photo sites that offer free image and video downloads, there’s no reason why you have to resort to using pixelated visuals. If you have the budget for it, invest in a photographer who can take shots of you during your gigs so you’ll have more personalized and high quality content on your site.
3. Add reviews and media coverage
As a hip hop artist, you’ve probably created a following for your work through your gigs. Getting quotes and reviews from fans can be a powerful way to market yourself. You can even add a website section called “what people are saying” or “what the press is saying” and have a list of all these testimonials on your hip hop website.
4. Navigation should be intuitive
Your visitors should be able to know their way around your website. There should be clear instructions on what you expect them to do next after reading your content. Add a powerful call to action depending on the objectives of your website. Your site should follow a logical and user-friendly layout so readers do not feel so overwhelmed by your content. When planning your website content, always have your user’s comfort in mind. Provide information that you think they are looking for and make it easily accessible on your page.
