A musician website you own, not a profile you rent
Music page, EPK, merch store and tour dates on one site. Zero commission on every sale.
No plugins. No second platform for the press kit.
15 days free trial · No card required
Music page, EPK, merch store and tour dates on one site. Zero commission on every sale.
No plugins. No second platform for the press kit.
15 days free trial · No card required
The basics
A music portfolio website is a site on your own domain holding the recordings, the live history, the press material and a way to book you or buy from you. It is not a Spotify profile and it is not a link-in-bio. Spotify owns the listener data. Instagram decides who sees the post. Both are worth being on, and neither is yours.
Four jobs the site has to do, roughly in the order they get skipped. Play the music without sending people off-site. Hold a press kit a promoter can open on a phone. Sell to fans without a percentage coming off the top. Capture an email address you keep when a platform changes its terms.
Why Pixpa
Design you can take apart.
200+ templates, editable down to the grid, with custom CSS and HTML when the editor runs out.
One site, not one plan per function.
The music page, the press kit, the store, the blog and the mailing list sit on the same subscription. Most people shopping for a website for musicians end up paying for a band page on one platform and a press kit on another.
Zero commission on every sale.
Pixpa takes nothing on top of what Stripe or PayPal charge to process the payment.
Support answered by a person.
Live chat with someone who knows the editor, not a ticket queue.
“Very happy with Pixpa! It provides everything I need along with the quality, for a price that can't be beat. It has all of the features I need for my business: Hosting music downloads locally, video & music player embedding, sleek design and easy to make it look great quickly!”
Design
Start from a template built for music rather than one built for a consultancy. The player, the tour list and the merch grid already have somewhere to sit, so the first hour goes into your photos and your copy instead of into layout.
Then break it. Move any block, change the type scale, upload your own fonts, write custom CSS or edit the HTML directly. If you have been running a musician portfolio on a theme you cannot touch, this is the part that changes. Most music-specific builders hand you a theme and a color picker.
Music and video
Embed from Spotify, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube or Vimeo, so the play count still lands where it counts. Upload files directly when you want people downloading rather than streaming: a single, a live take, a stem pack.
Tour dates go on a Live page you update from your phone, and the same page can take enquiries. Photo galleries handle the rest, whether that is a tour diary or the press shots from the last record, at full resolution and sized per device so a phone on 4G is not pulling a 6MB JPEG.
Press kit
An electronic press kit is a single page: short bio, two or three tracks, one live video, hi-res photos with the photographer credited, recent press quotes, a stage plot or tech rider as a download, one contact. A band EPK, an artist EPK and a DJ EPK differ only in what sits at the top.
On Pixpa that is a page on your own site, at a link you control, rather than a hosted EPK builder that holds the page when you stop paying. Password protect it while a record is under embargo, then unlock it on release day. Put the hi-res photo pack behind a Gallery Link so a press officer downloads the set in one go, instead of you sending a WeTransfer that expires in seven days. If you would rather the EPK not appear in your nav, leave it unlinked and share the URL directly.
Selling
Digital files sell straight from the store: tracks, stems, sample packs, a tab book, a live recording. Physical products get inventory, variants, shipping rules and tax rules. Payment runs through Stripe or PayPal into your own account.
Pixpa's cut is zero, on every plan. Prints and wall art can route through the integrated print lab. Apparel and vinyl you list and ship yourself, which is worth knowing before you commit: if you want print-on-demand shirts with no stock and no shipping, that is a gap on Pixpa today.
DJs and producers
A DJ site does a different job from a band site. The mix archive is the portfolio, the residency list is the proof, and the booking enquiry is the conversion. Embed sets from SoundCloud or Mixcloud, keep a dated gig list, and put a rate card and an enquiry form on the same page rather than routing agents to a DM. The same page doubles as a DJ EPK when a promoter asks for one.
Producers selling sample packs, drum kits or presets run the same store as everyone else: digital delivery on purchase, zero commission, your own domain on the checkout.
Step by step
An afternoon, if your bio and photos are already written. The same six steps work whether you are asking how to make a band website for four people or how to make a musician website for one.
Pick the three tracks that open the site.
The three you would send a promoter cold. Everything else goes below the fold or on a discography page.
Choose a template built for music.
Filter to music and performing arts first. Color is the easiest thing to change later.
Build the five pages that matter.
Music, Live, Store, Press, Contact. The bio can live inside Press. Anything else waits until you have a reason for it.
Wire the embeds.
Spotify, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo. Upload the files you want downloaded rather than streamed.
Set up the store and the mailing list.
Products with inventory and shipping rules, Stripe or PayPal connected, and an email signup on whichever page people land on most.
Connect your domain and publish.
Bring one you own, or take the free custom domain included for the first year on annual billing. Write your page titles in the SEO Manager before you share the link, not after.
Standards
The last one is where most music sites leak. On Pixpa the store, the enquiry form and the email signup are already on the site, so the next step exists without a second platform behind it.
The music plays on the page it lands on.
If a promoter has to click through to Spotify to hear anything, you have handed the visit to Spotify. Embed above the fold on the page your links point at.
The press kit is a link, not an attachment.
Nobody opens a 40MB PDF on a phone in a venue office. A URL that loads in two seconds, with the photo pack downloadable from the same page, gets used. A Dropbox folder gets ignored.
Tour dates are either current or gone.
A Live page still showing last October reads as a band that broke up. If you are between runs, cut the section rather than leaving it stale.
The bio is written for someone else to steal.
Write the version a listings editor can paste without editing: third person, one paragraph, name the record and the label if there is one. Keep the long first-person version underneath it for fans.
Photo credits are on the photos.
Press shots without a credit get used without a credit, and the next shoot costs you more. Caption them on the page and inside the download.
There is one thing to do next.
Buy something, get on the list, or book you. A site with three equal calls to action gets none of them.
“I tried many website builders, but Pixpa was the one that worked best for me.”
Compare
Search band website builder or music website builder and Bandzoogle is the first result on both. It is the specialist here and it is a genuinely good product. It has been building musician sites since 2003 and it charges no commission either, so that is parity rather than a reason to switch. Where the two diverge:
| Pixpa | Bandzoogle | Squarespace / Wix | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Portfolio work of any kind, music included | Music only | Anyone |
| Design control | Custom CSS and HTML on every plan | Themes; limited customization is its most cited weakness in third-party reviews | Template-level, with app add-ons |
| Print-on-demand merch | Not native, you ship it | Yes, via Printful | Yes, via apps |
| Private client galleries | Yes, with proofing and expiry | No | No |
| Free plan | No, 15-day trial | No, 30-day trial | Limited |
Pick Bandzoogle if the band is the whole business and print-on-demand merch is the point. Pick Pixpa if the person behind the music also shoots, designs, teaches or paints, and would rather run one site than two.
Answers
Yes, for the three things streaming and social platforms will not do for you: hold a press kit a promoter can open, sell to fans without a cut coming off the top, and give you an email list you keep when a platform changes its terms. Your streaming profiles stay where they are. The site is what points at them and what survives them.
Music that plays without sending the visitor away, upcoming dates, a press page with a bio and downloadable hi-res photos, a way to buy something, and an email signup. Five pages is usually enough: Music, Live, Store, Press and Contact.
Start a 15-day Pixpa trial with no card, pick a music and performing arts template, add your embeds and tour dates, set up the store if you sell merch, then connect your domain and publish. Most bands get a working site up in an afternoon if the photos and the bio are already written.
Pixpa has a 15-day free trial with no credit card and a 30-day money-back guarantee, but no permanent free plan. Free music site hosts exist and the cost shows up elsewhere: ads on your pages, a subdomain you do not own, or a cut of what you sell.
A short bio a writer can lift verbatim, two or three tracks, one live video, hi-res press photos with the photographer credited, recent press quotes with links, a stage plot or tech rider as a download, and one contact. On Pixpa an EPK is a page on your own site, so it lives at a link you control and can be password protected while an album is under embargo.
Yes. Pixpa's store sells digital files such as tracks, stems and sample packs, and physical products with inventory, variants, shipping and tax rules. Payment runs through Stripe or PayPal into your own account and Pixpa takes zero commission on the sale. Prints and wall art can route to the integrated print lab. Apparel and vinyl you ship yourself.
Get started
15 days · No card required · 30-day money-back