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Own It: Data Portability and Its Impact on Your Website

Who owns your data? It’s an important question that’s often overlooked when building a website or registering for the latest social media service, but the answer can impact your ability to access your content or communicate with your fans.

Data portability allows you to take your site content and reuse it across a number of different applications. Essentially, it’s the ability to control media and other forms of content in your possession. Data portability makes it easy to download information you may require in the future.

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It’s Shaping Up: Tips on Arranging Your Website Design

Website design is first and foremost an exercise in visual communication. In order to communicate effectively with your audience, your website needs to send the right message about your intentions.

If you give visitors a large chunk of information without any form or function, you risk alienating fans. While Flash advertisements, glitter banners and popup windows catch the eye, those features are a no-no as well.

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Poor Website Navigation Sends Visitors into Uncharted Territory

Website navigation is one detail you don’t want to skimp on. Mistakes can have a negative impact on your search rankings as well as user friendliness, however they can be avoided by following a few best practices.

It’s easy for your site to spiral into a messy clutter of music clips, video, photos and links, but with a little thought your site will gratify your current fanbase and encourage new listeners to keep in touch. With a carefully calibrated design, you can present a large amount of information without confusing or overwhelming visitors.

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How a Splash Page May Stop Traffic on Your Artist Website

For music fans both old and new, an artist website needs to offer an attractive, eye-catching design that contains the latest details about your recordings or touring schedule.

Too often in the past, Web designers have relied on a splash page to help the artist stand out from the crowd. Given their general misuse, splash pages can be just as annoying as pop-up advertisements and paper cuts.

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Sound Off: Autoplay Leaves Your Audience Singing a Different Tune

Imagine sitting at your office desk during lunch hour and scrolling over to the website of one of your favorite artists. Without notice, a massive eruption of noise shoots out your computer speakers. Not only are you embarrassed by this sudden burst of sound, your co-workers will be annoyed by the interruption as well.

The culprit? Autoplay. Just like those long-derided flash videos, autoplay causes Internet users to shake their fists in frustration. Consider these scenarios:

  • Most Internet users keep a number of tabs open at any given time, meaning it’s difficult to determine where or how to click the mute button.
  • If multiple songs and videos are embedded on the homepage, imagine the commotion of them starting at the same time.
  • The visitor is listening to music on iTunes or Pandora and wants to continue streaming without interference from other sounds.

Autoplay is widely known as the most reviled tactic of today’s digital world. According to the 2013 Digital Future Report, 84 percent of respondents aged 25 to 34 have left a website due to an “intrusive or irrelevant” advertisement. Even on a music-oriented website, the reaction is often similar. The best marketing strategy for an artist isn’t to hijack a person’s experience with content, but to rely on more subtle techniques that can hold their interest. When used properly, audio and video on your site can greatly enhance the visitor experience.

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Optimize Your Artist Website for Positive Results

In today’s world, most music buffs are searching online first for information on their favorite artists. The Internet has also proven to be a popular discovery tool, giving new and emerging artists an opportunity to lure new fans and followers with their digital assets.

Unfortunately, some websites are a never-ending maze, with dead-end roads and confusing stops along the way. Visitors can easily get lost, meaning less attention for your songs and touring schedules. As an artist, building a better website is important for maximizing your visibility and developing a strong online presence. In the coming weeks, we’ll hone in on each of the following components to provide further tips and techniques on how to deliver a first-rate visitor experience on your artist website.

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Cue: A Premium Playlist Plugin for Everyone

Showcasing music is an essential part of every musician’s website. After all, the music is what it all boils down to, right?

That’s why each of our themes features audio players in various locations: Americanaura with a site-wide, continuous player anchored to the bottom of the screen; Nowell features a slick lightbox popup; and Shaken Encore with players on the homepage and the sidebar. In some cases, these can be tied directly to a record in the discography, but often-times, people want to feature an arbitrary selection of music from across their catalog — a playlist if you will.

We’ve been keenly aware of the shortcomings of simply selecting a record or multiple tracks and decided we needed to improve the experience and make it as easy as possible to feature the music you want featured. Our initial goal was to bundle this functionality into our framework and make it available to our Professional and Developer license holders, but along the way we realized the ability to create playlists in WordPress would appeal to a broader audience. Plus, we selfishly wanted to use it in all of our themes and allow everyone else to use it, too.

We decided the best approach would be to deliver a premium plugin at a non-premium price (FREE).

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Introducing Nowell

Nowell is a 100% responsive WordPress music theme focused on clean simplicity from the front page to the archive pages. The idea behind Nowell was to simplify the home page and help focus visitors attention to content we want them to see. More often than not, music sites tend to be overloaded as far too much information on the home page, making it difficult for the visitors to focus and find what they’re looking for.

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Artist Spotlight: Big Tree Bonsai

Since re-forming in 2010, Big Tree Bonsai has wasted little time carving a niche in the upper-Midwest music scene with their own blend of Americana, alt-country, and vintage rock.

The band’s bio describes their sound as “something evocatively familiar, yet completely new,” featuring driving rhythms, powerful harmonies, and deeply-rooted, lyrical themes of renewal, reflection, and redemption.

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Make Money With AudioTheme: Join Our Affiliate Program!

Building a Better Musical Web. Together.

Are you a fan of AudioTheme? Do you love our framework or themes? Do you have friends in a band in need of a website? Want to make money and help your friends or others? Well now you can!

We are excited to present our new Affiliates Program with great payouts and a two-tier referral system. By promoting AudioTheme, you can make money when a user purchases a plugin or theme via your unique affiliate link. Better yet, our affiliate programs two-tier option allows you earn money when others become affiliates through your recommendation.

Building A Community. Together.

When starting AudioTheme, we wanted to create a dynamic community of music minded people, share thoughts and ideas, and ultimately help musicians connect with their fans and share their work through a great online presence. We’re hoping our affiliate program will be a community you’ll want to be part of and help promote. Together we can start building a better web experience for us and the bands we enjoy. Let’s make it happen!

Become An Affiliate Today!