With the release of Anberlinâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s newest album â┚¬Ã…”Citiesâ┚¬? the bands website has been redesigned around the theme of cities. When you get to the website the first thing you see is a black and white spinning globe with different orange spots on it to represent certain cities from around the world. When you click on a city you then zoom in with a very cool transition to a content area of the site. New York City has the bands news and Seattle has videos of the band and so on. Some of the little touches make this website such a pleasure to interact with, for example, as soon as you start playing a video the main sites media player fades down to a pause and when you stop the video the media player starts back up again.
The Anberlin website made me start thinking about other bands sites and just band websites in general. Do bands need a website; do they need elaborate ones, what should be on the bands site? First of all I think bands do need websites, but I think a lot of time they are over done and a waste of time and money. This doesnâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t apply just to bands but for a lot of bands out there I think a free MySpace, or Purevolume page is all they need.
When Iâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢m looking up and finding out about a band there are some key things I am looking for and I want to be able to find it quickly and easily (if they can do it in style then even better). The main thing Iâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢m looking for is a couple songs to listen to, either download or stream. The next is lyrics which tend to be a hard thing to find on bandâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s sites, the third is shows and a short bio and contact info is always nice. Those are some of the things that make a site useful for a band.
One of the worst band websites Iâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢ve seen has to be the Matchbook Romance website. It takes about 45 clicks to get through all the â┚¬Ã…”puzzlesâ┚¬? to the actual content, not to mention waiting for the loading times. There seems to be a growing number of bands/labels that just donâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t get the internet and how to present a band to the world through their website.
Is there any bands that have a website that youâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢ve thought are really good, or really bad? I sure there are, let us know which sites attract you or just repel you.
I think it benefits a band to have their own website, but not all bands need them. A MySpace page and PureVolume page are usually more then enough to spread their music. But when it comes to consistent branding for a bands album / website thats what makes it cool and useful to have their own website.
yeah i like band websites more because it usually has a theme to it and it is faster and more efficient then myspace….