Create a Musician Website: More Than Streaming Profiles

You have an artist profile on the streaming platforms, a few thousand followers and a link-in-bio page that holds it all together. Do you really need your own website on top of that? The short answer: yes — because everything you just listed stands on rented ground.

Your streaming profile belongs to the platform. It decides how the profile looks, what you're allowed to show there and whether the algorithm still surfaces you tomorrow. Your link-in-bio page is a list of links without a story, without search engine presence, without room for what makes you an artist. Your own website is the only space on the web that belongs to you: your design, your content, your rules, your address — permanently.

And it is the place where three groups find everything they're looking for: fans, press and event organizers. This article is about what belongs on that space, and how two very different musicians from Munich solved it.

The Problem With Borrowed Spaces

Streaming profiles and social channels are reach tools — as a home they don't work:

You control nothing. Layout, order, visibility: all platform decisions. One algorithm update, and your organic reach halves without warning.
Your story has no room. A streaming profile shows tracks and monthly listeners. Not who you are, how your music comes about, what your new album is telling.
Press finds nothing. A journalist who wants to write about you needs a bio, press photos and facts in one place — not scattered across five profiles.
Google and AI search come up empty. Anyone who googles your artist name and only finds third-party platforms gets their version of you — not yours.

The platform profiles still remain important. The website doesn't replace them — it is the hub they all point to.

What Fans, Press and Bookers Are Actually Looking For

Three audiences, three different expectations — and a good musician website serves all of them:

Fans want to listen and browse: new releases, videos, the story behind the album, upcoming dates.
Press and blogs want an EPK (Electronic Press Kit): a short bio and a full-length bio, print-quality photos, links to your most important releases, contact.
Organizers and collaboration partners want to know whether you work professionally — and how to reach you without friction.

If all you offer is a list of links, you send all three groups on a scavenger hunt. Most of them give up.

These Building Blocks Belong on Your Musician Website

You don't need a giant portal. Five building blocks cover almost everything:

Music: Your releases, playable directly on the page — as embedded players, ideally handled in a privacy-friendly way (more on that below). Plus links to every platform you're on.
Videos: Music videos, session recordings, studio glimpses. The same applies here: embed instead of just linking, so nobody has to leave your page.
Bio and EPK: Who you are, in two lengths (three sentences for the hurried, a whole story for the interested), plus photos in print quality. You can get usable images even without a photographer if you have to — how is shown in taking your own website photos.
Dates: Concerts, sessions, releases. Even if you rarely play live: an empty dates section is better than none at all, because it shows where people can check.
Contact and legal: A reachable contact option for booking and press — plus an Impressum (the legal notice German law requires on websites) and a privacy policy, both of which are mandatory in Germany even for artist websites.

Presenting Albums Properly Instead of Just Linking Them

This is where the biggest difference between a link list and a real website lies. An album is a work with context: its genesis, its concept, the artwork, maybe guest musicians or a special recording story. On your website you can:

give each album or release its own section with artwork, text and player,
decide the order yourself — the current album up front, the back catalogue behind it,
tell the story that has no room on any platform.

That is exactly what turns "another track in the feed" into a work people remember.

Getting Found: Google and AI Search

Your own website is the precondition for a search for your artist name — or for your genre plus city — landing on you and not only on third-party platforms. That takes clean page titles and descriptions, structured data (so search engines understand: this is a musician, these are their albums) and content in text form, because search engines can't listen to your music.

The same effect now applies to AI assistants: when they're asked about artists or music, they pull their answers from readable websites. Without your own site you simply don't exist in those answers — the background is explained in getting found in AI search. And why social profiles don't make up for it is covered in is social media enough instead of a website?.

Two Paths, One Goal: Two Examples From Munich

There is no single right way to a musician website. Two projects from our work show the two ends of the spectrum:

Existing Site Modernized: Charas Lounge

Charas Lounge is the music project of Munich composer and producer Ramon Giannini — lo-fi, chillhop, lounge. His website already existed, and the design was deliberately kept: it belongs to the project. What got upgraded was the foundation underneath — clean SEO with metadata and structured data, an Impressum and privacy policy, modern WebP images for faster load times, a tidied-up album presentation and privacy-friendly two-click players: the embedded Spotify and Vimeo content only loads once the visitor actively clicks it. That turned a grown artist site into a technically clean one — without touching its character.

Complete Rebuild: Benji Holiday

The opposite model is benjiholiday.com: Munich musician and DJ Benji Holiday replaced his website-builder predecessor with a complete rebuild — with a custom design that tells the dramaturgy of an evening from golden hour into the night, clearly structured offers from events to music lessons, and a well-thought-out inquiry flow. What a booking-focused site like that needs in detail is broken down in creating a DJ website.

The lesson from both: whether you renew the foundation of an existing site or rebuild from scratch depends on what's already there and where you want to go. What both paths roughly cost is put into perspective in how much does a website cost?.

Frequently Asked Questions

Isn't a link-in-bio page enough as a mini website?

For the Instagram link: yes. As a web presence: no. A link-in-bio page is a redirect, not a home — it has almost no chance of ranking on Google, offers no room for a bio, an EPK or album stories, and it runs on someone else's domain under someone else's rules. Harmless as an addition, unsuitable as a replacement for a website.

Roughly how much does a musician website cost?

That depends heavily on scope. A compact artist site with music, bio, dates and contact is significantly cheaper than a large project with many subpages — and if your existing site is fundamentally good, a modernization (SEO, legal texts, performance, players) like the one for Charas Lounge can be the most economical path. An honest price overview by project size is at how much does a website cost?.

Do I really need an Impressum as a musician in Germany?

As soon as your website isn't purely private — and with an artist project involving releases, a booking contact or merch it practically never is — you generally need an Impressum (Germany's mandatory legal notice) and a privacy policy. That applies no matter how small the project is. Missing legal texts are among the most common and most easily avoidable grounds for cease-and-desist letters in Germany.

Can I just embed my music from the streaming platforms?

Technically yes, legally with caution: embedded players load data from third-party servers on page load, which can be problematic under data protection law. The clean solution is two-click embeds, where the player only loads after a deliberate click by the visitor — implemented that way, for example, on charas-lounge.com for Spotify and Vimeo content. How to set this up step by step is explained in embedding Spotify and YouTube in a GDPR-compliant way.

Does my musician website have to be in English?

Depends on your audience. If your listenership is international — almost always the case with instrumental genres like lo-fi or chillhop — there's a strong case for English or bilingualism; Charas Lounge, for instance, runs its site in English. If you sing in German and mostly perform here, German is enough. A decision guide with all the trade-offs is at a website in English — is it worth it?.