Here are some music and technology related posts from the Widgetmatic/Metablocks family of blogs:

• What Should I build my Music Website On: Drupal, Ning or Wordpress
• Warner Music, Sony BMG, Universal + Drupal! Multi-site Platforms (Sound+Pictures)
• Facebook Applications for Music Artists (Metablocks)
• Country Music Fans and Digital Music Sales (Sound+Pictures)
• Altantic Records and Social Media Marketing (Sound+Pictures)
• Music Artists and Widgets: A Guide (Sound+Pictures)
• Beware of Twitter Spam: Overview + Guide (Metablocks)
• Understanding the Widget Space

Almost every artist has his or her own website, and they should! Websites, however, are expensive to build and perhaps more expensive (and time consuming) to maintain. So what are the different options and approaches available to music artists and bands when it comes to deploying a website to:

Different Approaches and Options:
Most artists would prefer to focus on their music than moonlight was a webmaster (although that is sometimes required).  Here are some of the approaches music artists are taking to get and maintain a presence online:

• The Music Label’s Multi-site Platform:
  Artists signed up with major music labels such as Warner Music, Sony and Universal can take advantage of their labels’ multi-artist web platforms.  Warner Music’s Artist Service Platform, based on Drupal, powers the websites of My Chemical Romance, Randy Dravis and many of their over 200 artists. Sony BMG Records’ artist web platform is also a Drupal-based multi-site that host such artists as Daughtry, Kelly Clarkson, Paula DeAnda and others. Drupal also powers BMG’s MusicBox. The benefits of this multi site approach are obvious: a shared codebase allows labels to deliver enhanced value-add functionality across the board with minimal incremental cost. Code and content reuse and sharing come into play, mixed in with common community. Obviously multi-sites are expensive to build and maintain, but music labels are ideally suited (the big ones that have a large IT department) to this approach. Over time, their investments are amortized across their portfolio of artist resulting in lower overall cost per artist than perhaps other approaches.
• The Music Label’s Mini-site:
  In the multi-site scenario, every artist gets their own site with their own ARTIST.com domain (Yipee!). The mini-site option is not quite as nice. Artist get relegated to just a sub-domain – ARTIST.LABEL.com (so are you the master of your domain?) or worse – a page. Ultimately it’s the artist’s choice – take the easy route or do it yourself. For example, some artists at Sparrow Records (a Christian music label and a division of EMI) use the mini-site as their official website (Avalon, Britt Nicole), while other don’t (Chris Tomlin: site and sub, Steven Curtis Chapman: site and sub). Many labels (including Sparrow) have robust artists sections complete with blogs, events and news, so living on the “sub” is definitely a option, especially if you are trying to cut cost.
• Blog-Driven Websites:
  Have become extremely popular in recent years. The relative easy of setting up Wordpress and huge SEO benefits associated with blogged have spurred companies like Skorinc and Ideaden to use Wordpress to power the websites and blogs of many Christian music artists like Natalie Grant, Addison Road, Michael W. Smith, MercyMe, and Phil Wicklam. If your label does not provide multi-sites, going BLOG is probably your best option (or at HAVING a blog). Wordpress works fairly well for building websites (after all our Widgetmatic site runs on Wordpress) and with the right set of plugins, themes and customization you can set with easy to maintain solution.
• Traditional and Proprietary Platform Websites:
  Before blogs and social networks and Twitter, there were good ole websites, and yes, these still exist. Some were build by hand (ouch!) and many run on proprietary platforms put together by webshops in the Web 1.0 era. Most of these proprietary (aka legacy) platforms have been updated to add features such as blogging and community, but unfortunately some of these implementations are lacking – blogs without RSS feeds, that sort of thing. No, I will not name any names, nor give any examples of any artist so as not to incriminate the guilty.
• MySpace is My Website:
  Once a popular and acceptable option (during MySpace’s peak), this option is becoming less and less attractive (as focus is shifting to sites like Facebook), but still some artists use and consider their MySpace page as their primary websites. Yes, its free (but MySpace gets to put their ads all over your page) and all you need is a custom template but unfortunately (other than traffic) MySpace doesn’t afford you too many features. Their blog is sub par, their music player is okay, and you have decent control of the pages. MySpace should be part of your online presence but it should be the ONLY part.
• The One Page Un-Website: Some artists have gone totally minimalistic, using social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube to “house” their content and community and providing a single page with link and widgets that serves as a “jumping point” for visitors. Artists like Marvin Winans Jr (M2 Entertainment) have used this approach, focusing their efforts on using social networks and communities. I expect these to become more and more popular with new artists given the shifting focus from websites to Facebook, Twitter, Widgets, i.e. especially give the growing cost (and time) associated with building large websites.
• Hanging Off a Community
  This is not as bad as it seems, ask Britney Spears, who’s “primary” site is powered by Buzznet. Buzznet is a social media/community site that hosts a number of celebrity blogs and sites.  Free for the artist, a traffic draw for the site, and they promise traffic and community in return – you decide. Artist that use Ning (another popular option) for their sites/communities, take a similar approach. The biggest problem I have with this approach is “ownership of fans” – who “owns” your fans and can you take them with you when you leave (and exactly how)…or are you locked in? The value to companies like Buzznet and Ning is obvious, artist bring users with them. Fans can be monetized through ads. The value to artist is….for the time being you don’t have pay rent (but one day it may come due).
• Pick One, Pick Two, Pick Three
  Everyone knows that one of these approaches are exclusive. You can have a multi-site, sub-site, spicy blog, obviously a large MySpace, with a little Twitter on the side, all to go (oh, and don’t forget the Facebook)! After all, the more content you have on the web, the better, so this is the best approach! Obviously cost and time are key consideration.

Recommendations:
Obviously we recommend most of the above, by that I mean (as I mentioned in the last approach) generally speaking more is better. So here are a couple of suggestions:

• Start Here: If your music label has a multi-site, you may want to take advantage of it.
• Get a Website! If you need to, pick one of the other approaches above – but get an online presence preferably with your own domain! Websites are not yet dead, so you probably still need one.
• Get a blog! It’s the best way of getting content out to fans (and they love it). Whether your blog is also your website is up to you (there are pros and cons that I won’t get into) but regardless, you NEED a blog.
• Get on Twitter! Twitter is not a substitute for blogging (think writing 140 character posts vs 3000 character posts) but its the FUTURE! Thanks to Time, CNN and Fox everyone is now on Twitter! Be sure to integrate your website (RSS feeds, Twitter widget, i.e.), your blog (Twitter widget, tweet your posts, i.e.) and Twitter!
• Get a Widget! A widget is “a website in a box”! Users can take it with them, and they can virally spread your widget in the process. The Widgetmatic platform, for example, allows an artist or band to quickly aggregate their news, blog posts, Twitter, photo  gallery, videos, music and any sort of content into ONE single widget (see examples).
• Get on Facebook! Get a fan page, get a custom URL, add Facebook page appliation from folks like iLike or Metablocks. Consider having your label build a custom Facebook appliation as well. While most of the music apps on Facebook are for fans, more and more artist are using Facebook as a release and promotional tool (same idea behind our SuperFan application).
• Get on MySpace! That a given, the again you are probably there already!
• Get Mobile! Most of your fans have a cell phone, so do you! Look at Mozes and other solutions out there.
• Get Working! So you have a website and a blog and Twitter and Facebook and everything else, no you only need content, some good music, and some great ideas on how to monetize the whole thing.