Website builder for musicians and bands

Artists have spent fifteen years building audiences on platforms that then changed the rules, throttled reach, or disappeared. A website is the one place where the layout, the mailing list and the link to your music are yours, and it is the only address that still works when the platform of the moment stops mattering.

Siteglade generates that site from a description and lets you update it by talking to it, which matters because a band website is not a project you finish. It is a page with dates on it that goes stale in six weeks unless updating it is trivial.

Below: what belongs on an artist site, how to handle tour dates and embeds without wrecking load time, what a booker actually needs from your press kit, and a prompt to start from.

The one link you actually own

A social profile is rented space. The layout, the reach and the rules belong to somebody else, and your audience there is a list you cannot export. Your site is where you can put a mailing list signup that nobody can throttle, and an email list remains the only direct channel to your listeners that survives a platform change.

This is not an argument for abandoning platforms. It is an argument for having a single address that every platform points back to, so that when a listener finally wants to buy a ticket, read your dates or check whether the record is out, there is one place that is correct.

The practical consequence is that the mailing list signup should be a real element on the page, not an afterthought in the footer, and it should say what people are signing up for. Occasional emails about new music and tour dates is a promise people will accept. Newsletter is not.

• One canonical address that every platform bio points at.
• A mailing list signup that states what and how often.
• All streaming and social links in one place, kept current.
• Dates, releases and contact, findable without scrolling through a story.

Tour dates: the page that goes stale fastest

Nothing kills the credibility of an artist site faster than a live dates section whose most recent entry was eight months ago. It reads as abandoned, and a promoter checking you out draws exactly that conclusion.

Design the dates section so that emptiness is handled gracefully. Ask explicitly for a fallback state that says something like no dates announced, sign up to hear first, with the mailing list form right there. That turns your quiet period into list growth instead of a dead section.

Structure each entry consistently: date, city, venue, and a ticket link or a status such as sold out or free entry. Past dates should either disappear or move to a clearly separated archive, because a mixed list forces the visitor to work out which shows have already happened.

Adding three dates is a sentence in the chat plus a republish, which is the whole reason this approach works for touring artists: the barrier is low enough that it happens on the day the dates are confirmed.

• Date, city, venue, ticket link or status, in that order.
• An explicit empty state with the mailing list signup in it.
• Past shows removed or archived, never mixed with upcoming ones.
• Update on announcement day, while you are already thinking about it.

Embedding music and video without wrecking load time

The obvious move is to embed a player from every platform you are on, plus two videos, at the top of the homepage. The result is a page that takes several seconds to become usable, because each embed loads a third-party bundle before your own content finishes.

A better pattern: one embed above the fold at most, and everything else behind a click. Use your own artwork as a thumbnail with a play control that loads the embed only when someone actually presses it. Everything else becomes a link, which costs a visitor nothing and saves them the load.

Say this in the prompt. Ask for embeds to load on interaction rather than on page load, and for images to lazy-load with explicit dimensions so the layout does not shift while it settles. Then check on a phone over mobile data, because that is where most people will open your link.

For hero material, a short looping video can work beautifully, but keep it small, muted and secondary to the actual information. An artist site where you cannot find the tour dates because a video is still buffering has failed at its only job.

The press kit bookers and journalists ask for

Promoters, festival bookers and journalists all want the same package, and if it is not on your site they either email you for it or move on to an artist who has one. Make it a page, put the link in your footer, and keep it current.

It needs a short biography and a long one, because a listings editor wants sixty words and a feature writer wants three hundred. High-resolution press photographs with the photographer credit, downloadable, plus a clear statement that they may be used for press. Your logo. Technical details: line-up, instrumentation, a stage plot and input list if you are a live band. Links to your best recordings. Past shows or notable support slots, stated accurately. And a booking contact that is a real monitored address.

Accuracy matters more here than anywhere else on the site, because these are people in the industry who can check. Do not inflate a support slot, do not describe a listing as a review, do not quote a publication out of context, and do not invent coverage. One overstated claim from a booker who was there is enough to end the conversation.

• A sixty-word bio and a three-hundred-word bio.
• Press photographs at print resolution, with credits and usage permission.
• Stage plot, input list and line-up for live bookers.
• A monitored booking address, not a general contact form.

Merch, tickets and where the money is handled

Siteglade has no cart, no checkout and no payment processing, so merchandise and tickets are handled where they already are. Your site is the shop window and the routing layer, not the till.

That is genuinely fine for most artists, because merch fulfilment, print on demand and ticketing all involve inventory, shipping and settlement that belong in specialist services. What your site should do is make the link obvious, keep the imagery good, and not send someone through three pages to find the ticket button.

Put the ticket link directly on each date. Put the merch link in the main navigation rather than only in a footer. If a release is out, the listen or buy link belongs above the fold, and it should be one link to a service you actually want people to use rather than a wall of eleven identical platform badges.

Writing the prompt for a band site

Describe the music, the aesthetic and the practical sections. The aesthetic description does most of the work here, because an artist site is judged visually within a second, and vague direction produces something that looks like a generic template.

For example: 'Build a site for a four-piece post-punk band from Glasgow with a cold, high-contrast aesthetic: near-black background, off-white text, one acid green accent used sparingly, a condensed grotesk for headings in all caps, tight tracking, hard edges, no rounded corners and no gradients. Single page with anchor navigation plus a separate press kit page. Sections: a hero with the band name, a short line about the new record and a mailing list signup; a listen section with one embedded player for the latest single loaded only when clicked, and text links to the other platforms; a live dates section listing date, city, venue and a ticket link, with an empty state that says no dates announced and shows the mailing list form; a short bio; a photo section with three press images; a footer with booking and management contacts and social links. The press kit page has a short bio, a long bio, downloadable high-resolution photographs with credits, a stage plot and an input list. Lazy-load all images with explicit dimensions and keep the page fast on mobile data.'

Then refine visually. Click into the live preview with the visual style editor to adjust the type scale, the letter spacing and the imagery directly, which is a much faster loop than describing typographic changes in words. And if you want to iterate on a look before committing, the twenty-eight curated templates each have a live public preview you can view before forking.

Last updated: 2026-08-16