Category Archives: Music Themes

Proof That WordPress Can Adapt to Any Industry

bandOn this Memorial Day week, we ran across an article that appeared on TheMusicVoid.com advising band members and managers how to start their own WordPress sites. Yes, even rockers can get into the act on WordPress along with the rest of us, which was proof enough of how dynamic the content system we all know and love can really be.

It really doesn’t matter if you’re setting up a portfolio or a photo book or a rock band’s website; the process is the same. However, let’s follow The Music Void’s example to see if we can discover what about WordPress is particularly important in that industry compared to others you might be familiar with.

After a band figures out what their URL will be, which is likely just their name, it’s time to find a WordPress theme that suits them best. But, what traits are important when it comes to selecting a band’s WordPress theme? As the site put it, consider “the genre which you/your band plays, the image you want to evoke, the style you want to convey, [and] the practicality of employing these on your WordPress site.”

For example, a country band may want to use country-related images, while a particularly dark band may want to employ a not-so-vibrant color scheme. The layout and look will likely depend in large part on what the band actually is.

Then there’s content. If you’re a band trying to get the word out about your existence, The Music Void recommended that a video appear on the home page: “A video or sound-byte would be the ideal choice as far as initial presentation is concerned. If you do include this for your index page, make sure to have options to turn it off and also have options to adjust the volume.” Nothing is more embarrassing than navigating to a web page while at work only to have music blare through the computer’s speakers.

Other content that’s important to bands specifically is an “About Us” section, according to the same site, so visitors know all about a band and can easily contact them. The Music Void added, “Band sites are rich with audio-visual content and customization is key to getting your name out there. Becoming popular and getting work is everything for a band and you should customize your site in order to be unique.” We’d recommend including tour dates and live show information if these exist as well.

wp-showThere’s a WordPress theme we’ve reviewed here on ThemeSquirrel called WP Show (pictured) that includes an oversized video player on its main page. If you’re a band or any entertainment entity, using a theme that features video heavily, as we just learned, is quite important. The WP Show theme includes a featured video carousel and supports text posts.

WordPress.com offers music-related features including a song player, tour dates, social media involvement, video embeds, and mailing lists. Apparently, WordPress powers the websites of artists like Snoop Lion, Xzibit, and The Gap Theory, just to name a few.

One of the most popular hosting solutions among websites we saw suggested that bands set up their own domains using BlueHost, which offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting. There’s optimized hosting for WordPress starting at $34.99 per month. There are also plans that cost a few bucks.

It’s interesting how many industries the WordPress concept can adapt to. Each industry values different marketing tools and, with the right theme, WordPress can bring each desired feature to the forefront of a site. Whether a business thrives by showcasing videos, audio, images, text, or a calendar, for example, there’s a WordPress theme that fills the need.

25 creative WordPress themes suitable for music bands websites

The modern human society devours music – everyone listens to music daily. People working in front of a computer listen to music, others enjoy it while working out, when other individuals listen to their favourite songs just to relax. Willing or not, music is part of our lives. This situation determined more and more people to embrace a singer or music producer career. The Internet is a very good source of recognition, therefore every aspiring musician or bands took care to offer enjoyable online presences for the fans. The web designers accepted a new challenge: to offer creative WordPress themes or websites for music bands. Creating a website for music bands isn’t an easy task because it should represent the essence of the respective musicians. Somehow, a web designer should transmute the sound into design!
A music band website must be original in order to convince people that their music fully deserves to be listened to. Fortunately, designers sell creative WordPress themes and every music band may have a very good official website. Previously, we showcased sets of creative WordPress themes that might be suitable for this kind of projects, but in order to help the musicians that need a fresh theme or a new website we collected here 25 extremely beautiful themes specially focused on this task.
A good website is capital for a music band, but it’s not enough in the never ending quest of getting more fans and visitors. A website should be a part of a complete strategy of advertising, therefore everyone should understand that it can’t replace the quality of the music produced. In the end, we strongly encourage you to design creative WordPress themes for music bands because the market isn’t covered. The first step is to enjoy and study the next 25 WordPress themes!

Music

1

Soundboard

2

Music pro

3

Clubber

4

Muzak

5

Nocturnal

6

Eprom

7

Replay

8

Muse

9

Rockit

10

Live

11

Music

12

Sound wave

13

Sound rock

14

Brooklyn

15

Acoustic

16

Stylico

17

Band zone

18

La band

19

Rock star

20

Rock palace

21

Nite

22

Iron band

23

Musico

24

I love rockband

25

The Best Music Themes and Plugins for WordPress

WordPress music themes and plugins are essential for upcoming professional musicians that need a mind blowing website to attract new fans and to get their music to reach the masses. A website that has eye-catching photos related to recent tours and gigs on the homepage along with a detailed biography of the band will make a good impact with viewers. Trailers of music files need to play on the website and customers should also be able to download the complete tracks for a fee. However, musicians and producers who are novices in web designing; there are various WordPress templates that are specially designed for this category. Here are some of the latest WordPress music themes:

Muzak Premium WordPress Music Theme
Muzak:

This premium theme for WordPress music sites stands out because of its Woocommerce-readiness besides the usual features of other music themes. It also displays events in an eye-catching layout; with optional map and past events enabled through the Theme Settings panel. Musicians can use JWPlayer to share self-hosted audio files of their songs or SoundCloud for embedded sound files. Detailed information related to albums can be added using Muzak’s Discography settings. Similarly, videos can be self-hosted or shared from popular social sites like YouTube and Vimeo.

· Audio and event management are the strong points of Muzak WordPress music template.

· Photo gallery makes it easy to add captions, change the order of photos and modify photo albums.

· Personalize the theme layout using the admin panel.

· Detailed user guide makes beginners very comfortable.

· Its design is search engine optimized and has threaded comments.

· It is designed using a skeleton grid, and comes with 9 PSDs and 18 HTML files.

Nightclubbing - WordPress Music Template
NightClubbing:

The features of this WordPress music theme, from Gorilla Themes are ideal for a night club website. Its music player supports audio playlists from SoundCloud, ReverbNation, Mixpod and videos from YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion and other popular online players.

· This theme is designed based on a dynamic framework. Event schedules can be added or modified.

· There is a separate module for featured articles.

· Banner management is made easy; images selected by the user are picked for the advertizing campaign.

· Custom widgets make it simple to integrate social networking into the music website as soon as the user’s Facebook / Twitter ID is provided to the NighClubbing theme.

· It has a range of 7 smart colors with a professional layout.

Stylico - WordPress DJ Template
Stylico:

Presenting a DJ theme that is built mainly with DJs in mind, but which also meets the needs of a music producer who has to manage releases and gigs for a band. Fans can quickly find where and when their favorite band is performing next using the integrated Google maps and the theme calendar respectively.

· It uses a 960 grid system and is coded with HTML5 and CSS3.

· Releases and gigs are the custom pages, with 3 types of custom posts: release, slide and gig. This orbit slider allows a caption to be added to each image or image link, along with shortcodes and HTML tags.

· Other features include 4 single widgets (popular and recent posts, upcoming gigs and recent releases) and 2 tabbed widgets (combinations of single widgets) spread across 7 widgetized regions.

· The entire theme including the admin panel for customization and the front end is also available in German.

BackStage - WooCommerce Music Template
Backstage:

Backstage is a multimedia theme for people in the music business. It is packed with features that help in highlighting upcoming shows and latest music releases to fans online.

· This theme gives users 7 different styles to choose from.

· Striking photos of the band or musician are showcased on the homepage slider.

· There is a dedicated module on the homepage for the biography of the band or musician. This gives readers a quick glimpse into their background.

· Woo widgets are available on the sidebar and in widgetized areas on the homepage. These offer high flexibility and useful functionality in terms of social links, audio / video players, recent news and e-commerce integration into the WordPress site.

Musician Theme for WordPress
Rockstar:

This premium WordPress musician theme is ideal for a blog or portfolio website for a musician. It has given ample importance to the overall graphical design; a website designed using the Rockstar template has a stunning effect.

· It supports 2 gallery styles (default and FancyBox).

· Simple text, screenshot images, video and HTML code can be included in the pop-up banner system.

· The mp3 Music player can playback any kind of audio media. Using shortcodes, it can be easily incorporated into posts.

· Sidebars come in all shapes and sizes; these can be created for each webpage or even each post.

· The range of musical instruments for the background image includes the microphone, keyboard, guitar, drums and turntable.

· It has a theme control panel for quick and easy editing of custom settings or the addition of new ones.

DanceFloor - Gorilla Music Template
DanceFloor:

Like NightClubbing, DanceFloor is a theme designed specifically for night clubs and DJ music sites. Installation is quick and all customization is also done in the blink of an eye.

· This template supports MediaElement.js, which is a widely used audio/video player script that allows DJs to upload their songs to the website for fans to download.

· It has an advanced events calendar that makes it easy to enter, track and edit dates of upcoming gigs.

· This theme is responsive to most devices, but particularly stands out with the iPad, iPhone and Android devices.

· It has 5 color styles and dynamic menus.

· It is pre-integrated with Google Adsense for banner advertisements.

· User can upload unlimited photos from Flickr to the DanceFloor gallery.

Soundboard - Premium Music WordPress Template
SoundBoard:

This music theme for WordPress makes it very easy to display and manage tour dates. It allows users to post images, photo albums and videos to promote the sale of their music and brand merchandise. With an endless range of colors, more than 500 Google fonts and translation-ready, a music band can push the limits of their creativity with this theme to increase their fan following. Custom widgets for the band’s latest album, photos, videos and links to social networks are prominently located on the homepage alongside the news section. It is equally impressive for a new user or an expert web designer.

· It is available in two main skins: light and dark versions. Further, any background image can be uploaded onto the theme.

· Information such as song titles in an album, release date, lyrics, audio player, album artwork and purchase options are included in the Discography section, which is one of the types of custom posts.

· SoundBoard has a shortcode to integrate JWPlayer; this allows users to upload self-hosted audio and video files to the website.

· Entries for tour dates have sorting feature. They are automatically tracked within the theme and filed under the Past Events section once the date has passed. This reduces the manual burden on the musician or band maintaining the website. Fields include a URL for the sale of tickets and checkboxes for a Cancelled or Sold Out show.

· Compatibility with the WooCommerce plugin allows direct music sales over the Internet.

· SoundBoard is linked to popular social media; every post and album has a button to integrate it with Facebook and Twitter. Users can add various social links in the footer of this theme.

· Wherever applicable, examples and screenshots accompany the step-wise instructions through the advanced user documentation.

Amped Musician Theme by StudioPress
Amped:

This music template for musician WordPress blogs takes away all the burden of designing a website that balances functionality with user-friendliness. It helps the band or artist to concentrate on making good music while on tour; their music is presented to fans all across the world through audio and video files, and show dates are also clearly stated.

· Amped music template is based on the Genesis framework for WordPress, which provides a beautiful frame-based layout, is optimized for SEO and has incredibly supportive team.

· The customizable settings include 6 layout options, theme options, threaded comments and featured images.

Replay - Responsive Music WordPress Theme
Replay:

Here is a premium music WordPress theme not only for bands and solo musicians, but also for record labels and anyone else in the music industry. Since it is translation enabled, this theme can work with a number of languages. They can share and sell music files using the powerful tools that come with this package. Events can be managed with minimal effort.

· There are 6 custom post types for artists, releases, video, gallery, slide and events.

· It has 7 built-in widgets for advertisement, social media, selected posts / galleries / videos, newsletter and upcoming events.

· The audio player has inbuilt HTML5 to play self-hosted mp3 files; this can be added anywhere on the webpage using shortcodes.

· Replay has excellent social networking features that are bound to increase the site’s number of followers. Links to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and SocialCloud are integrated on every page, along with the placement of Share Buttons.

· From the themed options panel, various settings for color, font, background and slider can be easily changed. You can create sidebars and switch page layouts and edit the fields displayed in the contact
form.

· Other notable features are the built-in audio player, slider in fade or ribbon form for album covers.

Nocturnal - Premier WP Audio Theme
Nocturnal:

Nocturnal is a premier audio / video WordPress theme that is popular among music bands and night club managers. Its layout supports flyers and posters to promote a band or club.

· Pagination is powered by Ajax tools.

· The widget panels slides out.

· On buying the Noctural WP theme, the user is entitled to a free upgrade when the next version is released.

· Animations and effects using jQuery make the website more appealing to viewers.

RockIt Now - Music Band WordPress Theme
Rockit Now:

Rockit Now is another responsive WordPress audio theme for music bands, with emphasis on track and album management, and calendar event management.

· It has 3 slider options.

· The template comes with more than 10 PSD files.

· It fully supports LTR and RTL functionality.

SoundRock - Music Band WordPress Theme
SoundRock:

Download tracks and manage them within an album using this theme. It also functions as a great event manager for a musician’s or band’s busy calendar. They prefer the SoundRock music theme for their WordPress websites because it is easy to setup and customize.

· This theme is available in 8 colors. Any color variations can be quickly created using detailed custom theme options.

· This is a responsive design and perfectly fits the screen size of any laptop or mobile device.

· It is social media-friendly and links to popular social sites

· There are 9 custom widgets and a top notch page
builder.

· It includes unlimited sidebars; a different one can be set for each webpage. Sliders can be picked from among the 3 types (Nivo, Sudo and Anything slider).

· Google and Cufon fonts can be uploaded, along with custom widgets for music playlists, events, upcoming events and social sites like Twitter.

Brooklyn - Musician WordPress Theme
Brooklyn:

Anyone in the entertainment sector will benefit by applying the Brooklyn music template to their website. It is based on the framework of Gorilla Themes; as soon as the theme downloads itself within 3 minutes, the user can begin to post photos and add content.

· There are 5 color styles; the theme admin module allows custom logos to be uploaded.

· There is an attractive slideshow module on the homepage.

· Module for embedding an audio / video player allows musicians to post their latest files online.

· The social media widgets integrate Facebook and Twitter fans into the website; they are listed on the sidebar of the music website.

· YouTube and Vimeo videos posted on the web pages will automatically resize to fit the layout.

· The entire Brooklyn theme is available in Spanish as well in the premium version.

Clubber - WordPress Music Events Theme
Clubber:

This is the perfect WordPress theme for DJs, club owners and musicians. It has inbuilt event management tools including an attractive display of upcoming gigs and up-to-date availability of tickets. A complete music album can be posted along with the genre, date of release and other details. Videos from YouTube or Vimeo can be shared easily. The Clubber template also includes an audio player. You can post unlimited photo albums and galleries within them.

· It has 8 custom widgets including an audio player, recent posts, SoundCloud for posting embedded sound files, Flickr, Twitter, upcoming events, latest videos and photos.

· Theme Options enables easy adjustment of logos, menu and link colors, slider images and favicons. Any background image can be uploaded in place of the Clubber background pattern.

· Clubber is powered by a wide range of Google fonts.

Harmony - WordPress Band Theme
Harmony:

Presenting a WordPress music theme that offers all the functionality required by a music band and much more, to take their popularity and online sales to the next level.

· There is a long list of useful page templates available with Harmony, such as Image Gallery, Portfolio, Blog Feed, Member Login, Sitemap and Contact Us pages.

· Settings can be quickly customized through the ePanel theme options panel. Even beginners can manage this with ease, without the need for any coding. Some features can be turned on / off while others like color and layout need a selection to be made from a list of options.

· Further, this ePanel theme options is integrated with the WordPress dashboard so that all the selected features of the theme can be viewed at once.

Music - Musicians Theme Facebook App for Music Industry
Music:

It is designed with the serious musician in mind and has special features unlike other WordPress music themes, this includes a power-packed music player and custom widgets for newsletter signup, menu carousel and customer feedback. What’s more, there is a Team Page and a unique layout for the Blog Page.

· There is a choice between an image or content slider.

· The entire website is reflected on the corresponding Facebook profile. This Facebook page has many back links to direct fans back to the website.

· It has easy-to-follow tutorials to set up the theme via 70 short videos, along with an index to jump to any section of interest.

· The events calendar does not need any plugins to be downloaded. It can be viewed for a particular day or several days at once. A prominent countdown timer widget draws attention to the date of the upcoming event.

· Backed by the power of Google maps, the Music theme shows users the accurate location for upcoming events.

FanClub - WordPress Music Fan Blog Theme
Fan Club:

Here is an artistic WordPress theme for musicians and bands who want to make a stylish impact on their online fans. A quick installation of the theme followed by easy customization has the site up and running within minutes, without any knowledge of web designing or HTML coding.

· The best photos and events can be proudly displayed on the homepage slideshow.

· Social media followers are shown on the sidebar of the web pages by using the custom widgets available with the theme.

· It has optional modules for highlighting the musician’s latest songs, videos and news.

· 5 color styles are available; a personalized logo can be uploaded onto the theme.

Unsigned - WordPress Music Template
Unsigned:

The tremendous potential of the Unsigned WordPress theme to showcase tours, photos, events, music and videos of bands and solo artists is in complete contrast to its simple, easy-to-use features. In addition, the integration of this theme with WooCommerce makes the sale of music albums and brand merchandise a piece of cake.

· There is lot of customizable functionality on the homepage, right from the basic layout to theme options and widgets.

· The Woo-slider on the homepage makes a striking impact with viewers, as the background image fades into the corresponding image on the slideshow.

· Album release information is displayed in the Discography module.

· Event management is simplified by grouping according to categories (concert, gig, club, festival). Event statuses are automatically updated using the scheduled date, and selected calendar snapshots can be viewed as required.

Eventure - Responsive WordPress Events Template
Eventure:

This premium WordPress template focuses on music event managers. Its calendar management stands out with an optimized display of dates having scheduled events only. This makes it less confusing for viewers and makes space for displaying other information.

· It is a responsive theme and works well with all the latest devices.

· This theme is designed primarily in black and white and takes on an elegant appearance.

· There are 15 amazing combinations for the home page.

· Logos can be easily customized with Eventure.

· It supports WordPress custom backgrounds and menus.

· The OptionTree plugin offers a user-friendly admin panel for customized settings.

· Various effects and animations are enabled through jQuery functionality.

MediaScene - Premium Music WordPress Template
MediaScene:

As the name suggests, MediaScene is the theme for any media-oriented music WordPress website. It has a very interesting website format for its detailed user help file. There is a great degree of flexibility and customization that tests one’s creativity when setting up this theme.

· The color picker makes the color range virtually limitless. It also offers a choice of 5 backgrounds and custom background option, Nivo slider, 25 Google fonts and multi-level dropdown menu.

· All the elements on the homepage can be customized, including sliders and blogs.

· Viewers can rate albums and add their review comments.

· The ready-to-use Ajax contact form
is a useful feature.

· 8 custom widgets, more than 100 shortcodes which can be added anywhere in the content on the home page.

Tribal Music Theme - WordPress Musician Template
Tribal Music:

Tribal Music is a very urban and fresh WordPress theme for music and media content that lets a musician, producer or publicist stand out from the crowd.

· Its dynamic menus can be customized to give viewers a great site navigation experience.

· It supports any audio / video player and file types.

· Theme layout can be switched between full screen and left / right sidebar through the theme admin panel.

· The beautiful homepage slideshow puts featured articles into the spotlight.

· Theme localization and translation is already part of the package with Tribal Music.

· Other unique features are automatic font replacement and multiple dropdown menu navigation.

Helpful Plugins for WordPress Music Blogs:

All the music templates for WordPress listed above are packed with features and functionality to assist all kinds of people involved in the music industry to create a striking online presence. Even more useful functionality can be easily provided by installing various plugins that are compatible with WordPress. Here are the most popular ones:

Ultimate DJ Manager - WordPress Music Plugin
Ultimate DJ Manager:

Any music producer or DJ cannot do without this plugin for WordPress.

· The custom SoundCloud player supports embedded audio / video files. It has the Standard or Cover grid skin, either of them being offered in blue, green, orange or black. The AutoPlay and Randomized playing options are useful features.

· There is an MP3 player in Flash / HTML version; both supports multiple playlists and provide the tracks connectivity to a purchase / download module. This plugin is compatible with all Apple devices like iPhone and iPad.

· The third special feature of this plugin is its Gig scheduler, where each gig gets a separate image and link to the event website.

Uber Audio - WordPress Plugin for Musician
Uber Audio:

This WordPress music plugin is essentially a playlist manager; a unlimited list of custom tracks can be created quickly and placed on the sidebar or posts for the fans’ listening pleasure. These playlists are managed through the admin panel.

· This plugin is compatible with all major browsers.

· While it works with most audio files, the recommended type is MP3.

· There is a choice between dark and light color schemes.

· It is a multilingual plugin, supporting English, German, Spanish and Russian.

MyMedia - WordPress Music Media Plugin
MyMedia for WordPress:

This plugin helps in adding multimedia metadata to a music blog with little or no effort. A movie or music collection can be easily cataloged using IMDb or Last.FM metadata respectively, and even files can be imported in batches.

· MyMedia is integrated with BitTorrent for faster downloads.

· The plugin automatically searches for YouTube trailers for a specified movie and adds them to your file.

· It can search for lyrics on Chartlyrics and add them to a music file being imported.

WordPress Band Manager Plugin
WP Artist Manager:

Managing music artists doesn’t have to be a tough job anymore. WP Artist Manager helps recording labels and music stores to build websites / directories for a music band with the biography, videos, upcoming gigs and other useful information.

· The plugin is powered by useful custom widgets.

· The main modules are Artist management, Discography management, Video management, Event management, Photo management and Custom Page management.

Paid Downloads Pro - WordPress eCommerce Plugin

Paid Downloads Pro
:

Any musician, band, DJ, club or producer who wants to sell their musical content online will highly benefit from the Paid Downloads Pro WordPress plugin. It is integrated with all the popular payment sites (PayPal, Skrill / Moneybookers, EgoPay, Liberty Reserve etc.).

· Once customers make the payment, this plugin provides them with a temporary encrypted download link for the requested digital file, which could be music, books, software or anything other media content.

· The plugin is translation-ready for all the common languages and thus has international appeal.

These WordPress music themes and plugins will help you build the best music related website.

Best WordPress Music Themes plus Joomla, Drupal, and HTML music templates

best wordpress music themes 2012Singers and songwriters as well as other types of musicians and bands will be pleased to know that WordPress music themes will send the musically inclined on the fast track to showcasing their creative work. Artists who use music as a creative outlet will find that WordPress themes intended for musicians and bands are one of the best ways to connect with other music enthusiasts and fans. Here is the best part about incorporating WordPress themes into your online presence – it’s totally free. Better yet, WordPress requires no code writing, HTML or CSS experience or programming. It all sounds almost too good to be true but is indeed true. WordPress is perhaps the premier content management system available today for those seeking a free alternative to developing a strong web presence.
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My Music Blog – How I use WordPress for my musician website

When deciding to start a music blog, I needed to decide upon a blogging platform. WordPress is free, popular, well-supported, and also simple enough for virtually any layperson to use. WP is also fairly easy to customize which means I can avoid spending hundreds of dollars on website development fees. I can do all the layout myself and choose the theme I want to use in order to blog about my favorite musicians and music. If I plan what I want beforehand and take advantage of the various plug-ins offered by WordPress, I could conceivably develop a site that is both user and site manager-friendly. I am the one who will be updating the site so I need to be able to make changes effectively and efficiently.
Soundboard - Premium Music WordPress Theme
Continue reading My Music Blog – How I use WordPress for my musician website

Best WordPress Music Themes for Musicians and Bands

Soundboard - Premium Music WordPress Theme

Soundboard

Soundboard is a standout among new WordPress music themes with amazing features for the music industry. The Internet is the best way to develop a following for anyone in the music industry these days. The Soundboard WordPress theme is built for promotion and makes getting your music out there as easy as a few clicks of your mouse. You get a slick, professional-looking website that will impress both your fans and anyone interested in finding out more about your band. Soundboard’s first benefit is its professional look, and the colors are endlessly customizable. Your band’s logo can easily be added, resulting in a theme that looks like it was custom-designed specifically for your band or music management company.
Continue reading Best WordPress Music Themes for Musicians and Bands

The best WordPress music themes for band and musician blogs

If you are a musician or in a band and you are searching for a way to present and share your music, using WordPress is one method that is free and easy-to-use, regardless of your knowledge with HTML, CSS and programming altogether. WordPress is known as one of the most popular free CMS (content management systems) options available and comes packed with features that allow you to easily update and share anything from text posts to live video and music feeds, depending on your use for the application.

When you want to use WordPress, and you are looking for the best WordPress music themes, it is important to conduct research before purchasing a theme to find a match that works for your artistic style and with the way you envision presenting and sharing your music with loyal fans and potential listeners. Below is a current list of the most popular themes for musicians and artists who wish to share music while growing their listener base.
Continue reading The best WordPress music themes for band and musician blogs