A website is an essential tool for musicians and bands as it allows you to have a place on the internet where the focus is on you. The first step is to create a music website. Then you can add a custom website address, otherwise known as a domain name.
Domain names aren’t always straightforward, especially if you’re new to creating a website for your music. Let’s explore a few common questions, to clarify what domain names are and why they are important:
What is a domain name?
Why is it important to have a domain name for your website?
Where to get a domain name
Website domain name vs website hosting
Domain name registration costs
How to choose the best domain name for your website
Renewing your domain
How to use an existing domain with your website
Here’s the outline of things to consider when the time comes to choose a domain name for your music website:
What is a domain name?
A domain name appears in the address bar of your web browser. Think of it like your business address. With a domain name, you have control over how people connect to your music website and content on the web. If you want someone to visit your website, you can just let them know your domain name so they can easily find your website and content online in seconds.
Why is it important to have a domain name for your website?
A domain name is important because it is completely unique to your website. It should identify your music website immediately as being yours. Unlike social media accounts, your name won’t be simply attached at the end of a generic URL. For example, consider these social account URLs: facebook.com/yourband or bandcamp.yourband.com. These URLs are used by every other member of those services, so your project doesn’t really stand out. Your own custom website domain would be something like yourband.com – easy for fans to remember, and easy for you to add to business cards or posters.
Every musician should create a brand to go along with their music and persona; think of a domain name as an extension of that brand. Plus, once you have a custom domain name, you can verify this domain with Google and submit your sitemap so that your website will start appearing in Google search results.
Where to get a domain name
Typically, you’ll register a unique domain name through a domain registrar, and pay to renew it yearly. You can get a domain name through a number of website companies as well.
Bandzoogle website plans include one free custom domain. You can register your domain name directly in your Bandzoogle account, or transfer your current domain name here (some exceptions apply). From there, we take care of the renewal and associated fees for you each year as part of your website membership. As long as you have an active website plan, you don’t have to do anything on your end beyond keeping your Bandzoogle account active, making it easy to maintain the custom domain for your website, year after year.
Website domain name vs website hosting
A domain name is different from website hosting. Often website companies will bundle products, and offer both domain and hosting, which can lead to some confusion.
A domain is the name that identifies your website – the custom URL. Website hosting is the technology that stores your website online. This is done through computers called servers. When someone types your custom website address (domain) into their browser’s address bar, the server connects them to your hosted website, and they can view your website pages.
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Domain name registration costs
For most domain names, the average cost is between $10-$15 per year. If a domain registrar wants to charge a substantially higher amount (and it’s not a premium domain) you should compare prices with other companies or consider a variation of the name.
If you’re set on a certain domain name or variation of your band name, there are different extension options to consider (see below), but choosing something familiar is a good bet both for visitors to remember and for securing a decent registration price point.
Domain privacy can be an add-on as well (this is automatically included if you maintain your domain name through Bandzoogle, at no extra cost).
How to choose the best domain name for your website
If you’ve chosen a fairly unique band name, hopefully yourbandname.com is available to register. In terms of domain extensions, a .com web address is a universal standard for domain names.
However, if .com isn’t available for your band name, consider registering a domain name ending in .org, .biz, or .info, or a country-specific domain like .ca or .co.uk. In recent years .rocks and .band are also domain extensions that could be used. These aren’t as universally known, though, and may cause some confusion if you expect visitors to arrive at your band website by typing in your domain name. These extensions can also be more expensive to register and renew.
If your desired domain name isn’t available, other options to consider are yourbandnamemusic.com or yourbandnameband.com, or some similar variation. If you’re a solo artist and your ideal domain is already taken, you can also use a name like yournameofficial.com or yournamegenre.com. Adding your genre to the end of the domain will help identify you and your music – especially handy if you have a common name.
Renewing your domain
In the life cycle of domains, there’s nothing worse than finding out that your domain expired and someone else has already registered it. It can take a lot of time and money to try to get it back, if you’re able to at all. For this reason you’ll want to make sure to renew your domain on time.
If your domain is registered through Bandzoogle, we automatically take care of it for you while you are on a current paid website plan. You don’t have to remember anything. It’s an automated process so it will renew on time each year.
If your domain name is registered elsewhere, see if you can set it up for auto-renewal or pay for several years in advance. Keep in mind that domain names and website hosting are different things, so you’ll often still need to renew your domain with the registrar as a separate fee if your domain is registered externally.
Let’s say your domain name does expire. Most domain registrars will allow you a 30-day grace period to renew the domain. After 30 days, the domain goes into a holdover period of 60 days or more. During the holdover period, the domain is locked,which prevents it from being renewed or transferred. Once the holdover period passes, the domain is released and available to the public again for registration, first come, first served.
If you register a secondary domain name, or a domain name with your EPK at Bandzoogle, you’ll be set up with an automatically-recurring payment subscription. This will help ensure you don’t lose your domain name due to non-payment.
How to use an existing domain with your website
Once you’re set up with a hosting plan and have built a website, you’ll want to connect your domain name. To get your domain to load your website there are two main options: the first is to go into the domain settings and change the nameservers to point to your website host’s servers. This is fairly easy to do, and your website host can provide instructions. Once you point the nameservers, the domain should load your website within 24 to 48 hours. This is always your best first option.
However, if your website host (like Bandzoogle) includes domain renewal, you may want to also transfer the registration of your domain. This requires a few more steps and can take up to 10 business days to complete. Once done, your website host will be in charge of the domain, and can renew it for you going forward.
If you have custom domain-based email addresses (like address@yourdomain.com) already active with an external email service provider, the steps to get your domain loading a website through your website host servers can be different.
In this case, be sure to reach out to your website host before making any changes to domain settings. Let them know about your email service – they should be able to walk you through the appropriate steps to take to keep everything functioning smoothly.
Bandzoogle provides both domain pointing and domain transfers at no additional charge. And don’t worry: even if you need to put your website on hold, we’ll transfer your domain registration over to you (or another domain provider) to take with you at your request.
A domain name is your unique address on the web, and is an important part of creating a music website. We hope this helps take some of the guesswork out of the domain name aspect of website building, so you can focus on what you do best: making music!
