WordPress offers a ton of flexibility for musicians and bands, even though the platform wasn’t created specifically with the music world in mind. Here’s our list of the top 7 WordPress Plugins for Musicians.
Having a website is mandatory for any profession, including musicians. In fact, with the ability to build an audience and sell directly to your fans, establishing an online presence is becoming even more enticing.
Advanced functionality at your finger tips. With these plugins you can stream video, book and manage gigs and events, post to a calendar, create simple, staffless chord sheets, track downloads, sell CDs, host a music forum, post and manage band photos and much much more.
Luckily, musicians have WordPress at their disposal, and WordPress in turn has a lot of tools available for musicians. Even if you’re not a techie.
Read our post on the best WordPress Themes for Musicians here if you need help selecting a theme.
Let’s get started.
1. GIGPRESS
If you tour on a regular basis, then GigPress is a plugin you’re going to want in your arsenal.
GigPress is a powerful WordPress plugin designed for musicians and other performers. Manage all of your upcoming and past performances right from within the WordPress admin, and display them on your site using simple shortcodes, PHP template tags, or the GigPress widget on your WordPress-powered website.
2. NextGen Gallery
NextGEN Gallery is the industry standard for WordPress galleries, with 15+ million total downloads and 40,000 new downloads per week. It’s by far the most powerful WordPress gallery plugin available, with hundreds of options in the free version and even more with Pro extensions.
It’s not necessarily a plugin for musicians, but surely every musician loves to take photos, right? Definitely recommend!
3. SPOTIFY MASTER
Another gem in our list of WordPress plugins for Musicians is Spotify Master. If you’re a musician, you oughta be signed up to a streaming service whether it be Spotify, SoundCloud or Reverbnation. And the beauty of these is that they all have plugins for wordpress. With Spotify Master, you can show off your spotify stuff inside the comfort of your WordPress.
Spotify Master for WordPress allows you to display in your template widget areas musics, playlists and albums of the cool and “booming” music network Spotify.
4. DOWNLOAD MONITOR
This is a top WordPress Plugin for Musicians. Download Monitor provides an interface for uploading and managing downloadable files (including support for multiple versions), inserting download links into posts, and logging downloads.
It is important to monitor the downloads of your content especially if it’s your own original song or lyrics.
Good thing there’s the WordPress Download Monitor which can help you track everything you upload and see how often they’ve been downloaded,. You can also create “members only” downloads, create custom URLS and more.
5. YOAST
This powerful plugin from Yoast focuses on search engine optimization. I’d definitely recommend it for musicians simply because there’s nothing as vitally important as being found online. That’s how the shows come.
Yoast SEO will actually grade each page and post included on your website, letting you know how it will perform during a search for targeted keywords. Yoast SEO also guides you through the proper way to make your site more search engine friendly and make sure your fans can find your website. SEO is something that you can spend a lot of time trying to understand, without truly getting a grasp of how to effectively optimize your site. Luckily, the step by step setup wizard and excellent documentation for Yoast SEO makes search engine optimization possible for anyone, even musicians.
Download the free version here
6. GOOGLE ANALYTICS BY MONSTERINSIGHTS
Google Analytics help you determine when and how people are visiting your website. It allows you to gather valuable data on the types of content that are performing the best for you and what websites or social media platforms are sending you the most traffic. Google Analytics can even help determine geographical locations where you have a large audience, and may want to focus more time.
If you don’t want the stress of logging into the main Google Analytics website, then use this one by Monster Insights. All you need is a code.
And finally, the number 7, of our 7 WordPress Plugins for musicians is:
7. FOXYSHOP
FoxyShop is a complete shopping cart solution for WordPress. I chose this over WooCommerce simply because of how simple the learning curve is. You should definitely look up WooCommerce though. Absolutely beautiful.
Every musician oughta have a store, and this plugin makes it super super easy. FoxyShop was built to make the integration of FoxyCart and WordPress a breeze. Products are easy to manage and the flexible templates make it easy for developers to quickly build their storefront. The FoxyShop plugin is exhaustively documented, actively maintained, and completely free.
So there you have it – 7 WordPress Plugins for Musicians. Read our post on the best WordPress Themes for Musicians here if you need help selecting a theme.
Cheers!
Zee.
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