How To Sell Music Online: Complete Quick & Easy Guide in 2024

If you’re serious about building your music brand, a dedicated website is essential. While platforms like Spotify, Bandcamp, and YouTube are great for sharing music, a website gives you complete control over how fans engage with your content. It acts as a central hub where you can showcase your tracks, announce concerts, sell tickets, and even offer merchandise.

With a website, you can also sell directly to your audience without relying on pre-built platforms that limit your customization options. You get to design your store to reflect your brand and have complete control over how you sell your music, merchandise, or physical goods like CDs.

The good news is that creating a professional music website is easier than you think. Platforms like Wix offer user-friendly tools and pre-built templates that make the process quick and straightforward, even for beginners. In this guide, I’ll show you how to set up your music website step by step.

Research Phase

Before you dive into building your online store to sell music, it’s essential to go through a thorough research phase. This will help you define your niche, understand your audience, and set the foundation for a successful music business. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started.

Finding Your Niche

Narrowing your focus to a specific niche is crucial. Consider what makes your style unique. Are you centered on a particular genre like indie rock, electronic, or classical? Or do you target a specific audience, like vinyl collectors or live recording fans? Identify 1-3 sub-niches that align with your passion and style. This sharpens your marketing and deepens your connection with your audience.

Analyzing the Competition

Take a close look at what your competitors are doing. Visit the websites of other artists or music stores within your niche to see what products they offer, how they price their items, and how they engage with their audience.

Pay attention to their website design, content, and overall user experience. This analysis will give you ideas for your own store and help you identify gaps in the market that you can fill. By understanding what works for your competitors, you can create a more compelling and competitive online presence.

Defining Your Brand

Your brand is what sets you apart from other artists or music stores. Think about how your music, visuals, and messaging will differentiate you in a crowded marketplace. What story does your music tell? What emotions or experiences do you want to evoke in your listeners?

Your brand should reflect your personality and the unique qualities of your music. Consider how you’ll communicate this through your website design, logo, and promotional materials. A well-defined brand will make your store more memorable and appealing.

Researching Your Target Audience

Understanding your target audience is critical to creating content and products that resonate with them. Start by identifying who your ideal fans are. Are they young adults who enjoy discovering new indie artists, or are they older audiophiles who appreciate high-quality recordings?

Use tools like social media analytics, surveys, or music streaming data to gather insights into demographics, preferences, and behaviors. This will help you tailor your website, product offerings, and marketing strategies to better meet your audience’s needs and preferences.

Choose the Right Platform To Sell Your Music

When it comes to selling your music online, you have several options: building your own store, using specialized platforms, or selling through social media. If you want complete control over your brand, presentation, and sales strategy, building your own online store with a website builder like Wix is the best option. Then, you can use your website to link all of your other platforms for a complete online presence.

Specialized platforms like Bandcamp or streaming services like Spotify make it easier to get your music in front of potential buyers, but using them comes with significant trade-offs. These services often charge higher fees, limit how you market your products, and restrict storefront customization. While they’re simple to set up, the lack of control becomes a significant drawback as your fan base and brand grow.

On the other hand, building your own store gives you complete control over every aspect of your brand. With a site builder like Wix, you can create a professional-looking store that perfectly reflects your music’s ethos. Wix allows you to manage all your sales channels, from eBay and Amazon to social media, through a single dashboard. You can easily track merch & CD inventory, update product listings, and handle orders from one place.

What I think matters most is that Wix offers a free plan, allowing you to build your store and test out all its features before committing financially. This will enable you to explore its user-friendly tools, such as customizable templates, integrated payment gateways, and marketing features, without any upfront costs.

Choose a Good Name for Your Online Store

Every online music store needs a name. Ideally, the name of your store should match your domain name, a.k.a. the web address where your store will live online. For example, if your store is called “Indie Beats,” your domain name should be something like “indiebeats.com.” This makes it easier for your fans to find you online and ensures consistency across your branding.

A domain name is essentially your store’s address on the internet. It’s what people type into their browsers to visit your site. Since your audience might be new to this, choosing a name that is memorable, easy to spell, and reflects the essence of your music and brand is crucial. Avoid names that are too long, complicated, or easily confused with other websites. Instead, opt for something that is unique and stands out in the crowded online music space.

Keep in mind that a domain name is a separate cost from your website builder plan. However, some website builders, like Wix, offer a free domain for the first 12 months when you sign up for a paid plan. This can be a great way to save money as you get your store up and running.

Plus, Wix provides valuable tools like domain name search engines, which help you identify available domains and suggest alternatives if your first choice is already taken. These tools make it easier to find the perfect name for your store without the hassle.

Customize Your Music Store

Once you’ve chosen the right platform and domain name for your music store, it’s time to bring your vision to life by customizing your online store. Here’s how you can set up a basic music store using Wix, with easy-to-follow steps to help you create a visually appealing and functional site.

Step 1: Choose (or Generate) a Template

Wix offers a variety of templates for music stores. To get started, log in to your Wix account and navigate to the template selection page. Look for templates designed for musicians, bands, or online stores. Once you find one that resonates with your brand, click “Edit this site” to start customizing. The template you choose will serve as the foundation for your store’s design and layout, but don’t worry – it’s not set in stone.

You also have the option of having Wix use AI to generate a website template from scratch. That way, you can get your site up even faster, as you don’t have to search through templates or even customize anything. You still have to answer some questions in a chat, though.

Even though Wix’s AI is good, you’ll probably still have to make a few edits yourself here and there.

Step 2: Customize the Homepage

The homepage is the first thing visitors will see, so you must make a strong impression. Start by changing the background to something that reflects your music style. Click on the background area, select “Change Background,” and upload an image or choose from Wix’s stock photos.

You can even use the AI generation tool (powered by DALL-E) to create original images, which is pretty cool.

Step 3: Personalize the Essential Pages

In addition to the homepage, you’ll want to customize other essential pages, such as the “About” and “Contact” pages. For the About page, update the text to tell your story—why you create music, your journey, and what makes your sound unique.

Add a few high-quality images that represent your brand and music style. On the Contact page, ensure that your contact form is easy to use and that all links to your social media profiles are active.

Step 4: Fine-Tune the Design Elements

Lastly, refine the design elements across your site. Customize the fonts to align with your brand’s personality – whether bold and edgy or smooth and classical. Adjust the layout of each page by dragging and dropping elements to fit your vision. If your template includes any sections or features you don’t need, simply delete them to keep your site clean and focused.

You can always make small changes to your website’s look and feel, so don’t get too caught up in getting it perfect right away.

Add Your Music as Products With Wix Music

Now that your Wix store is customized and ready to go, it’s time to add your music and merchandise as products. This process is straightforward, but there are a few key steps and tips to keep in mind to make sure your products not only look great but also attract customers.

To start, log in to your Wix dashboard and navigate to the Wix Music section to add your music. It’s very easy to set the price and let people download the tracks. You can even let your fans decide how much they want to pay for your music, which is an interesting (but risky!) feature, especially if you’re just starting out. To sell physical merch, CDs, or vinyl records, you can integrate different types of stores into your website – or even print-on-demand services for band t-shirts.

To ensure your products catch the eye of potential buyers, focus on using high-quality images and compelling product descriptions. For physical merchandise, such as t-shirts or posters, take clear, well-lit photos from multiple angles. If you’re selling music as a digital download, include album art that represents your brand and genre.

When writing product descriptions, highlight what makes your music or merch unique. Use engaging and descriptive language that resonates with your target audience. For example, instead of just listing a t-shirt as a “Band T-shirt,” describe it as a “Limited Edition Indie Beats Band T-shirt, featuring our latest album cover design – perfect for true fans.” This kind of copy can create a connection with your audience and encourage them to make a purchase.

Update Your Store Settings and Payment Information

Next, you’ll need to set up the payment methods your store will accept. In the “Settings” section, navigate to “Accept Payments.” Here, Wix offers several popular payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and credit card processors.

For a music store, it’s generally a good idea to enable PayPal because of its widespread use and customer trust. Stripe is another excellent option, as it allows you to accept credit and debit cards directly on your site. Additionally, if your audience is international, consider enabling multiple payment options to cater to different regions.

Preview and Launch Your Wix Store

Before you hit the publish button on your Wix music store, I strongly recommend you thoroughly review and test everything for a smooth launch. Start by previewing your site on both desktop and mobile screens.

Wix lets you switch between views in the editor, ensuring that your content – images, text, videos, and layouts – displays correctly on all devices. Mobile responsiveness is crucial since most visitors will view your site on their phones.

Next, test all the e-commerce features you’ve set up. This includes adding products to the cart, checking out, and processing payments. Make sure all buttons, links, and navigation menus work as expected. A broken link or non-functioning button can frustrate visitors and hurt your credibility, so take the time to click through every page and feature to ensure a seamless user experience.

As a final step, consider running a speed test to check how quickly your website loads. Fast loading times are crucial for keeping visitors engaged and improving your site’s search engine ranking. You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to test your site’s speed. If you find that your site is loading slowly, consider optimizing images, reducing the number of plugins, and enabling browser caching to improve performance.

Once you’ve checked everything and are confident that your site looks great and runs smoothly, it’s time to launch it and share it with the world.

Start Selling on Amazon, eBay, and Social Media

One of the major advantages of using Wix to build your music store is that you can quickly expand your sales channels to platforms like Amazon, eBay, and social media directly from your Wix dashboard. This centralization saves time and simplifies inventory management, ensuring that your products are available to a broader audience without the hassle of managing multiple platforms separately.

Setting Up Stores on Amazon and eBay

To start selling on Amazon and eBay, go to your Wix dashboard and navigate to “Sales Channels.” Here, you’ll find options to connect your Wix store to Amazon and eBay. Click on the platform you want to integrate with and follow the prompts to link your accounts. Once connected, you can manage your listings, synchronize your inventory, and process orders from within your Wix dashboard.

Selling on Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool for reaching fans and driving sales. Wix makes it easy to sell on platforms like Facebook and Instagram by integrating directly with your social media accounts.

From the “Sales Channels” section, select the social media platforms where you want to sell, and follow the steps to set up your stores. You can create shoppable posts, showcase your products, and engage directly with your audience, all while managing everything from your Wix dashboard.

Tips for Music Products

Music products, particularly digital downloads and streaming, often perform best on specialized platforms like Bandcamp. If your primary focus is digital music, consider also using platforms specifically designed for music distribution. However, Wix does offer Wix Music, which allows you similar digital download options, allowing you to sell your music directly from your website.

It takes thirty seconds to find and install the app, so there’s no reason not to give it a shot.

Exploring Additional Integrations

Wix also supports integration with major music platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, not only through third-party apps but as an organic part of the Wix Music app. When you add an album or song, you can simply link it with your other platforms so your fans can go there and get it. Yes, that includes Bandcamp.

This centralizes your management while giving fans the flexibility to engage with your music on their favorite platform, making it easier for you to expand your reach.

Promote Your Music Online Store

Launching your music online store is just the first step – good promotion is essential to reach your target audience and drive sales. Different strategies work better for various niches, but a combination of approaches often yields the best results. Here are some tailored strategies to consider:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial for improving your site’s visibility on search engines like Google. Wix offers built-in SEO tools that guide you through optimizing your site’s content, meta descriptions, and keywords. Focus on keywords related to your music genre, merchandise, and unique selling points to attract the right audience.

Email marketing allows you to engage directly with your audience, announcing new releases, upcoming concerts, or exclusive merchandise. Building an email list can be highly effective, especially for niches where fans are eager for updates. To get started, consider using top-rated email marketing services that integrate with your Wix store. These platforms offer customizable templates and analytics to track your campaign’s success.

Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X (Twitter), and TikTok let you share music snippets, post behind-the-scenes content, and engage with fans in real time. Managing multiple social media accounts can be time-consuming, so utilizing social media management tools can streamline the process. These tools allow you to schedule posts, monitor engagement, and analyze performance across different platforms.

If you’re new to digital marketing or simply want to focus more on creating music, hiring a freelance expert can be a wise investment. Platforms like freelance websites offer access to professionals who specialize in building and promoting online stores. These freelancers can assist with SEO, social media strategies, and even website enhancements, often at affordable rates.

Promoting your online music store takes ongoing time, effort, and sometimes a bit of investment. To build momentum faster, try selling your music and merch on multiple platforms like Amazon, eBay, and social media while also using streaming services like Spotify. This multi-channel approach helps you reach a wider audience quickly, working alongside your regular promotional efforts.

Final Thoughts: Getting Your Music Store Off the Ground

Starting your own music store is a significant step toward sharing your music and building your brand. With a platform like Wix, you can easily create a professional website that not only sells your music and merch but also serves as a hub for fan interaction and updates. The process is straightforward, and with ready-made templates and AI-based tools at your disposal, you can have a functional store ready in just a few hours.

As you get your store up and running, it’s important to remember that maintaining your website is an ongoing process. Regularly updating content, tracking your site’s performance, and staying engaged with your audience are critical to long-term success. And the good part is, you don’t have to do it all at once. Start with the basics – get your store online – and then gradually refine and improve it over time.

The first and most crucial step is to simply get started. Once your store is live, you can make adjustments and improvements as you go so your online presence grows along with your music career.

FAQ

What is the best website to sell music?

The best website to sell music depends on your needs and goals. If you want complete control over your brand and sales, building your own store with a platform like Wix is a great option. It offers customization, easy integration with other sales channels, and tools to manage your site.

Can you make money selling music online?

Yes, you can make money selling music online. By selling digital downloads and physical merchandise and streaming your music on platforms like Spotify, you can generate income. The key to success is building a solid online presence, effectively marketing your music, and engaging with your audience. While it can take time to build up revenue, consistent effort in promoting your music and expanding your reach can lead to profitable results.

How can I upload my music and get paid?

To upload your music and get paid, you can use platforms like Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music. If you build your own website using a platform like Wix, you can sell music directly from your site, offering both digital and physical products. Payments are processed through integrated payment gateways like PayPal or Stripe, so you receive funds from sales efficiently.

How do beginners sell music?

You can sell music online as a beginner by first creating a centralized online presence, such as a website or a music store, using platforms like Wix. This allows you to showcase your music and merchandise, build a brand, and engage directly with fans. You can also use specialized music platforms like Bandcamp or streaming services like Spotify to reach a broader audience. Additionally, promoting your music through social media, email marketing, and other channels can help attract buyers.