Your passion is music, and you want to share it with the world.
How do you do that? You can learn how to start a music blog and monetize it, that’s how.
Even if you have no technical skills at all, you can share your passion for music with the world.
The following guide will provide you with the essential information you need to start your music blog and how to monetize it. We’ll begin with why you should start a music blog.
Why Should You Start a Music Blog in 2023?
There are so many reasons to start a music blog that we cannot fit them into one article. Why you start a music blog depends on your level of enjoyment for music. However, we can give you some ideas to get you started.
Music Reviews
Are you an avid music lover with a good ear? Your good ear can help you voice your opinion about a song or piece of music. People like you will want to know what others think about certain songs, so that they know whether to buy and download the album or song.
Self Promotion
If you’re a musician, singer, or both, you can start a music blog and monetize to promote yourself. Find popular musician websites of local musicians who promote themselves and seem to get a lot of traffic on social media and their websites.
It’s not only a good way to promote yourself, but it’s a good way to let your fans know where and when you’re playing a gig. By the way, you can also use this type of blog if you’re a DJ.
Publicize Music Events
Perhaps you are that person who knows when bands and singers are appearing at various venues in your local area or even in your country. A music blog is a great way to provide that exposure for singers and musicians.
Build Your Blogging Resume
If you are seeking to get some attention to your blogging skills, a music blog can show off your skills, no matter what music niche you choose. You can then make your blog part of your resume to build your reputation.
Enhance Your Writing Skills
If you know things about music that you want to share, but you need to improve on your writing skills, a music blog is an excellent way to do that. The more you write, the better you will get at it. You may even become an authority with your monetized music blog.
Build Relationships with Popular Artists or Bands
You never know if your music blog will get the attention of celebrities. You may even be able to build relationships with some of your favorites. This may be the best reason to start a music blog and monetize it.
Earn Income from Your Blog
One of the main reasons people start blogs in general is to make money. It’s a common and acceptable practice.
A music blog that is monetized can create a good income for you as you monetize, build, and grow. Even if you just want to operate a music blog as a hobby, there’s nothing wrong with earning an income from it.
How to Start a Music Blog in 2023
Now that you have some good ideas for starting a music blog, it’s time we went into how to start a music blog to turn that dream into a reality.
1. Choose Your Focus for the Music Blog
The first thing you should do is determine which way you want to go with your blog. Find your reason, your purpose.
This relates to what you will write about and who you want to read it. Here are just a few in a long list of ideas for your music blog.
- Song meanings
- Favorite band statistics and information
- Local bands and artists
- Music/artist/band news
- Best concert venues
- Playing specific instruments
- Globally known indie artists
Now, choosing your focus relies upon the reason you are starting your music-related blog.
For instance, if you’re creating a music review blog, determine if you’re focusing on music you love or music you don’t like.
Maybe you’re planning to focus on new and up-and-coming artists or guitar playing tutorials.
Basically, you need to decide your reason and your focus before you choose your niche.
Avoid Starting a Generic Music Blog
Avoid the mistake of creating a generic blog about music that appeals to a large audience of different segments of people. Some people think that is the best way to create any blog, but without a narrowed niche, you’re just grasping at the air to survive.
The most productive and effective thing you can do with a music blog is to narrow down your content to a specific topic. You want to appeal to a specific audience with your blog.
That general music blog is likely to become tedious to your readers as they try to shuffle through all the information you’re feeding them. Even if you’re a great writer with great content of value, if you don’t narrow it down, it will all feel disconnected to your readers, and they will lose interest.
Avoid being everything to everyone in this case.
Writing niche-related material about music to a targeted audience will get more traffic and attract the appropriate audience who will read, enjoy, and share it. Keep writing valuable and unique content, and your followers will be excited every time you write a new blog post.
For example, if you decide to write about artists you like, start with just one and gradually expand your content to the next one. Finally, you will start writing about 5 to 10 artists that you like.
After that, you can start adding content related to the venues where your favorite artists have shows or talk about the instruments they each play and perhaps their musical education.
In other words, start with your narrowed content, and then you can take a broader approach once you gain some authority in the niche.
2. Choose a Music Niche
Now you have your purpose/reason for starting a music blog and monetization and your focus for your content, you can choose from a multitude of music niches.
We will offer up a few for consideration and for brainstorming.
Now you should understand that no one is going to be interested in a generic music blog, but if you dedicate your blog to jazz music, you have a niche and an audience to which it will appeal.
Most of the focus of your music blog will be dedicated to a specific genre, regardless of the focus of your blog.
Here are a few of the most popular music genres from which you can choose:
- Blues
- Classical
- Country Music
- Dance
- Easy Listening
- Electronic
- Folk
- Heavy Metal
- Hip Hop
- Jazz
- Latin
- Opera
- Pop
- R&B
- Reggae
- Rock
- Soul
Keep in mind, there are many other genres from which to choose, as well as other music niches. These are just an example of what you can write about. Whichever niche you choose, be sure to write unique articles with value and of interest to your target audience.
If possible, your niche should offer something different from other music blogs in your niche. Yes. Other bloggers will likely have a blog in the niche you choose, but your concern is to create something that will fill gaps in the niche that haven’t been covered.
You simply need to find a way to stand out in the niche.
When Choosing a Music Niche, There Is No Right or Wrong
One of the things to avoid is overthinking your niche selection. Just avoid being generic. You can blog about any music genre, teach music, teach people how to sing better, or anything related to music. There is so much to consider.
Narrow down your niche and then, if you can, narrow it down again. For instance, you decide on the Jazz genre and then how to play jazz guitar. Believe it or not, you can even niche that down again by using how to play jazz guitar like a specific artist. Do you see where we’re going with this?
The point is to focus be laser-focused on a narrowed down niche over generic blog content. This puts you in the expert category in your niche, making you a thought leader in that niche.
While you want to be able to expand over time, narrowing your niche a couple of times can help you become the authority that people come to when they want to know about the topic you’re covering. They will seek you out to find it.
Now that you have your music niche for your music blog, you need to choose your blogging platform. That is, where you will host your blog.
3. Choose a Blogging Platform
You have your focus, niche, target audience, and laser-focused niche, so now let’s look at the best option for your blogging platform.
You might be surprised to know that there is an overwhelming number of solutions in blogging platforms, both free and paid.
Though the free list is long, some of them include Tumblr, Blogger, Wix, and Squarespace. Most beginners are prone to going with free blogging platforms, but when you want to be a successful blogger with a profitable music blog, it’s not a good idea. Why?
Free blogging venues restrict your monetization and your customization abilities. Also, if you don’t have your own domain name, people aren’t going to think you’re serious about your music blog, no matter how passionate you are about it.
Free blogging platforms tend to look unprofessional because the URL includes the name of the free platform. For example: Playjazzmusic.wix.com. People know what Wix is, and they will know you aren’t self-hosting and that you don’t have your own domain name. It does matter.
We like to recommend WordPress.org, which is the paid version of WordPress and not the free version, which is WordPress.com. WordPress.org is an excellent blogging platform to use. Most professional bloggers use it for many reasons.
Why Should You Choose WordPress for Your Self-hosted Music Blog
We suggest using your own self-hosted WordPress site for your music blog. WordPress is the leading blogging platform across the globe. That’s because it’s powerful, dynamic, reliable, versatile, and feature-rich.
As for hosting, we recommend Bluehost. This hosting platform is affordable, reliable, and works very well with WordPress. You can start your music blog and monetize it on Bluehost, starting at $2.95 per month.
WordPress.org has some of the best solutions for monetization and customization available. It’s so good that it can help you convert your blog visitors into lead generation and then into sales. You cannot do that with free blogging platforms.
WordPress Vs Free Blogging Platforms
- WordPress is easier to use, making it ideal for beginners because no coding skills are required.
- It’s more professional than the free alternatives.
- WordPress makes the blogging platform easy to install with just one click.
- WordPress is easily customizable with no limits other than your own.
- You get flexibility for monetizing your music blog.
- You can quickly and easily integrate literally thousands of plugins to expand your site’s functionality. This includes contact forms and more.
- The WordPress community is loaded with helpful developers and users.
WordPress Statistics to Know
- WordPress is the blogging platform for around 34% of the top 10,000 blogs on the planet.
- 59.4% of all the CMS websites currently use WordPress.
- 37% of the entire internet is build on the WordPress platform.
- WordPress’ users generate about 70.5 million blog posts every month.
- More than 1.1 million domains are registered each week because of WordPress.
WordPress can help you build a dynamic music blog and monetize it. You can also use visually aesthetic layouts and upload video and audio files that play back without issue. You need to know that if you’re considering creating a music blog.
4. Brainstorm a Domain Name
Choosing your domain name is another thing you need to avoid overthinking. Just take a few elements into consideration and choose well.
- What will your blog be about?
- What kind of music will you write about?
- Who will be reading your content?
The answers to these questions will guide you to selecting your perfect domain name for your music blog.
Things to Consider for Your Domain Name:
1) Go for a .com Extension
The best domain names have a URL that end with .com. Since this is the most popular extension over others, you can boost your blog’s presence.
2) Allow Space to Expand
Give yourself a little wiggle room for your domain name’s expansion by not getting too specific with the name. For instance, a domain name like “jazzmusic” instead of “playjazzmusic” will allow you to expand from just playing jazz to covering more information related to jazz over time.
3) Short and Sweet Wins
A short, easy-to-remember domain name is the easiest to remember and to brand. Avoid long, complex words. Be unique and catchy.
4) Try Alliteration
Alliteration, according to Dictionary.com is “the commencement of two or more words of a word group with the same letter.” Also, the first letters can sound similar. For instance, jumpingjazz, or jiggyjazzjitters. The uniqueness makes that easier to remember.
5) Be Creative
Your domain name is only as creative as you want to make it. If you choose a few domain names that are already taken, be creative and brainstorm using the same ideas or synonyms of the domain names.
6) Additional Words
Sometimes a music domain name like “jazzmusic” that is already taken may only need a single word to make it available. Instead of “jazzmusic”, try “thejazzmusic”, or “jazzmusicblog”.
7) Make It a Concept
You can brainstorm ‘around’ your blog’s name. You just need to be sure ot keep it relevant and in line with your blog’s purpose. So, let’s say you love jazz so much that you want to defend it somehow. Maybe there were dark days before it came about. You could name your blog “jazzdefense” or “jazzjustice” or “jazzequity”. Show your favorite music genre its due respect.
8) Try Out Name Generation
There are free name-generating tools online that you can use to help you create your domain name. Websites like Lean Domain Search and Instant Domain Search are two such tools. You will enter your niche, some relevant keywords related to music and your genre, and the software will generate several combinations for you.
9) Avoid Expensive Domain Names
You are likely to be tempted to spend more money than you need to on your domain name, but resist that temptation. Stick to the standard domain name option and then if you want to, you can go for the more expensive domain name later. Give your music blog some time to grow and thrive first.
10) Don’t Get Stuck On This
As mentioned at the beginning of this section, don’t overthink it. You can become obsessed seeking the perfect domain name for your blog if you’re not careful. This issue has caused many a potential blogger to give up, but don’t let that be you. You have a passion you want to share, so do it. Don’t spend more than an hour or so on choosing your domain name. Just do it and move forward.
Some Music Blogs to Learn From
Hip Hop Wired – This one is relevant because it writes up news about hip hop music.
Drowned in Sound – This domain name is good because it’s short, easy to remember, and it uses the concept of alliteration.
Under the Radar – How brilliant is this name for an indie music blog?
These real life domain names for music blogs should inspire you.
5. Buying Hosting and a Domain Name
Besides obtaining a domain name, you will need domain hosting. This is a special service that stores the files and content of your website. It’s also how your blog is made public online. You pay a small fee for hosting for this.
There are so many website hosting providers out there, it can be overwhelming. That’s why we like to offer our recommendation of Bluehost. It offers reliability at an affordable price and superior customer service.
Step-By-Step Domain Hosting
Step 1. First, go to the Bluehost WordPress hosting page on the Bluehost website.
Step 2. You will see the plans available. We suggest “Plus” or “Choice Plus”, but you don’t have to do that yet. Basic is fine to get started. You can save money through this link over the regular price.
Step 3. Once you have clicked your plan of choice, you will be directed to the page where you will either type in your domain or choose to create your domain later if you haven’t chosen one yet. This domain URL will be the one people type into their browsers to see your website once it’s live.
Step 4. Now, you should be on the information page where you input your account information. Just follow the form.
Step 5. This page is where you put in your Package Information. You’ll choose the duration of your plan. We recommend 24 months to take advantage of the discount, but you can go with the 12-month option if you want.
Step 6. Here is the page for any extras you want. Just hover over “more information” to learn more. We recommend getting the Domain Privacy + Protection to save your name from being tied to your domain name. You can look the other extras over and choose the best ones for you.
Step 7. This is the self-explanatory payment page.
Step 8. This is your last page of the signup where you get your confirmation of payment, and things you need to read like Bluehost’s terms of service, privacy notice, and their cancellation policy. Simply click the check button and then submit.
Step 9. Now you will be prompted to create your username and password. This will be your login information for Bluehost. You will be able to manage your website and account information here.
Step 10. Bluehost provides a short questionnaire to help you understand your goals for your website. If you’re new to blogging, it’s advisable to answer them. You can skip this step otherwise. This is part of your onboarding experience.
Step 11. Your next step is to choose your blog’s theme. It’s best to choose one from the free themes for now. You can always get a paid one when you start earning money from your music blog.
Step 12. Once you get to this point, you will be in the backend admin page of WordPress. You will be managing your site from here. You can upload images, music, video, write content, and add posts and pages as you desire. After you get some content on your site, click on “Launch Your Site”.
Step 13. Your music blog s now live. Type your domain name into a browser and check out your website! Congratulations! Your music blog is ready to be seen.
We aren’t going to leave you hanging. We will keep explaining how to edit things on your new music website.
6. Choosing Your Music Blog Theme
WordPress is now installed on your website, so it’s time to pick your music blog theme. The theme of your blog is related to how your blog’s layout looks. It’s a template of sorts that allows you to easily customize your blog so that it looks just how you like it.
You may find yourself a bit overwhelmed by how many themes there are between the free and paid versions. One of the differences between the free and paid versions is that the free themes are limited in customization options and the paid themes offer full customization.
You also need to be careful about the free themes since some of them have malware or spam links that will be problematic in time. Unfortunately, this happens more often than we like to mention. Also, the free themes don’t come with customer support, so if you have issues with it, there’s no resolution.
So, you will want to find a good option from the premium themes to get optimal customization, growth, monetization, and customer support, while avoiding the spam and malware issues.
Paid Themes Vs Free Themes
Paid themes are better for beginning bloggers and are user-friendly.
Comprehensive functionality for your blog comes with paid WordPress themes.
If something goes wrong, you get premium customer support.
Paid themes offer full customization.
The themes are professional, aesthetic, sleek, and unique.
Your blog will look so much better when you choose a paid theme. You will not need the help from a costly service, nor do you need to know or learn coding. Choose the predesigned theme that looks best to you in a few mere clicks of the mouse.
The best way to choose your blog theme is to go check out other popular music blogs and get some ideas. There are also theme solutions like these that are designed with music blogs in mind.
- Beats Music Blog Theme
- Music Band Blog Theme
- Music Forest Music Blog Theme
You can find many, many more, but we think you can get an idea by checking these out.
Remember, when you’re looking at your competition, the goal is to get ideas, not copy them. Your music blog should be uniquely yours, so choose wisely.
You’ll be looking at the page layouts, colors, and other design elements that you can choose for your blog. Pay attention to everything and choose what will attract your target audience and fit your blog content.
Themeforest is a WordPress theme marketplace where you can look at various themes as well.
What’s In a Good Theme?
What should you look for in a theme?
- Speed
- Customization options
- Customer support
- Reputable brand
- High-quality designs
- Mobile responsiveness
- Good user ratings online
After you find your perfect theme, you can start creating your pages.
7. Create Your Logo and Essential Pages
Now that you have everything you need to get started with your music blog, it’s time to start adding content. First, there are some essential pages you need to create.
Your essential pages include vital information pages that don’t fall into any other category. Essential pages are your About, Privacy Policy, and Contact pages. You will seldom have to update these pages, if ever.
What to Include In Each Essential Page
About: This page is likely going to be your most visited page on your music blog. Why? Because your target audience will want to know about you, who you are, and what you’re all about. Tell your readers why they should want to follow your music blog.
You can make this page fun and entertaining while being informative. It’s good to show off your personality on the About page to let your visitors get to know you. Your About page is essentially your page for public relations.
Tell your story and try to connect with people. Remember that people don’t connect with brands, but with other people.
Contact: The contact page needs to include all important and relevant information that lets readers reach out to you. It should be easy to find, concise, and highly visible.
Be sure to provide multiple methods of contact including email, some form of chat, social media, and other methods of contact.
Privacy Policy: Your readers need to know that you care about their privacy. Your privacy policy also protects you from legal liabilities. This is one of your most crucial pages on your website. You will use this to tell people how you collect visitors’ information, use it, disclose it, and how you keep it safe.
You can find free websites from which you can find pre-written privacy policies to fit your needs. Additionally, you may consider creating a Disclosure page, Disclaimer page, and a Terms and Conditions page.
Depending on the kind of music blog you are creating, you can also use a resources page or a demo submissions page.
Logo Creation
While you’re considering your essential pages and content for your music blog, you should work on your brand logo.
You can use free logo creation software online, Photoshop, or other websites like Canva to create your perfect logo.
Use high-res images to use on your blog and across social media.
8. Time to Start Blogging About Your Passion
Now you can get to work creating your articles and content for your music blog. The first step here is to select the category for your first blog post.
Every time you publish a blog post, it’s important to place it in its category. Every single post needs to be in a specific category. So, if your post is a music review, it will be categorized as reviews. You can create individual categories for your posts, but don’t go overboard.
Why categorize? Because your readers will appreciate the easy access of finding your blog posts in specific categories. For instance, if a reader wants to read about your music reviews, they click Reviews and there are all your pages of reviews for them to read.
The following are popular music categories for writing:
Music Venues
- Club Events
- Music Genres
- Reviews
- Industry News
- Artists’ Mixes
- Playing an Instrument
Choose categories that appeal to you and that are relevant to your music blog content.
More Tips for Successful Music Blogging
Create Quality Content
There is no way around it. You must create quality, unique content for your music blog. You are up against a multitude of music bloggers competing for top ranking online. Your goal should be to curate interesting, relevant, and high-quality content loaded with value for your site visitors.
There is a huge difference between popular music bloggers and basic music bloggers. Basic bloggers will lather, rinse, and repeat content over and over, while the popular bloggers are always providing value and something different.
No matter what you write, be sure to interject your own personality into it. Get readers interested and then keep them interested.
Stand Out from the Crowd
You stand out from the crowd by setting yourself apart from all the other music bloggers. As this industry grows and evolves, technology has its place in music. That is something to consider when you’re creating content.
Everything changes so quickly that it’s up to you to keep up and blog about. Plus, you will always be learning about new devices to write about, so try to be the first to do that and get the edge.
Current events, engaging content, and keeping up with technology are crucial parts of a good content strategy.
Your Keyword Strategy
Keywords can be another overwhelming thing that is crucial to your blog content and SEO. Your keywords will help you rank higher on Google when you use them the right way.
Your blog posts have a higher chance of making a good showing on the search engines when you use a solid and well-thought-out keyword strategy.
Start by researching questions that your target audience would ask to find relevant keywords. A good rule of thumb is to address and solve problems people have or answer questions they are curious about.
Then, you create content using the keywords around that.
One tool you can use to find keywords is Answer the Public. This site provides you with insights related to your main keyword, which will be the topic and niche of your blog.
We are going to cover blog promotion next. Before you implement promotions for your music blog, you should have at least 10 blog posts on your blog. You don’t want readers showing up on your blog with nothing to read, do you?
9. Promote Your Music Blog
You have, so far, gone through the process and your music blog is ready to promote. You have at least 10 blog posts on your music blog, and now you need readers.
This part can be a bit intimidating, especially for newbie bloggers. However, promoting your blog is the only way to get exposure to your blog. It’s simply something every successful blogger does.
Here are some of the methods of promotion you can use to get visitors to your music blog.
Family and Friends
First, share your blog with family and friends. That’s the easiest and fastest way to get quick traffic to your website. Most of them will be happy to support you efforts by visiting your blog, reading your content, and sharing your music blog with their friends and family.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is still an effective method of getting people to your blog. You can build an email list for lead generation through social media and through lead pages, which you will need to learn about over time.
Your email list will get notifications about new blog posts via email to get traffic to your site as you share it.
Social Media Marketing
As long as you’re creating that high-quality content of value, you may as well show the world. Social media marketing is one of the best methods of getting exposure to your music blog.
Creating engaging social media content that leads back to your blog will attract music lovers who will follow you on social media, and comment, like, and share your posts. This engagement can lead to a huge traffic boost.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
You should already have your blog monetized for SEO. Your high-quality content and keywords should help boost your organic rankings. Search engines love quality content.
Public Forums
Public music forums are good for sharing your content. These are also venues where you can find your target audience and show them what you’ve created. You just leave comments on the boards and ask follow forum readers to look at it.
10. Make Money Music Blogging
Even if you wanted to start music blogging as a hobby, you can turn it into more than that. You can turn it into a money-making blog. You can convert your visitors into customers, resulting in revenue for you.
Your income from blogging about music can range from a little side money to a full-time income, depending on your goals. Monetization can do that for you.
Here Are More Ways to Make Money from Blogging About Music.
Information Products: Selling information is a huge market and has been almost since the internet started. The opportunities for making money by selling information are vast. For instance, you can sell checklists, song lists, reports, e-books, and courses related to music as it pertains to your music blog.
Google AdSense: AdSense has been a staple opportunity for making money for bloggers for many years. You allow Google Ads to be placed on your website, an in return you get paid when your blog visitors click or view the ads. This form of monetization is simple and needs very little maintenance. As your music blog gets popular and grows, so does your income.
Make a Web store: Turn your music blog into a webshop and sell items your readers will want. You can sell any software related to music, artist or band merchandise, books, music, or whatever you can sell that is relevant to your blog.
Sponsored Posts: Sponsored posts are posts like reviews for products or promotions for others who pay you to write something on your blog about them. It takes some time to reach this level of writing, but it can be done. You do need to ensure that the sponsors are relevant to your niche.
Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time. This idea is that you promote products that fit into your niche in blog posts and when people join or buy from that link, you earn a commission. There are several affiliate marketing venues you can use to do this.
Final Thoughts
While it may seem overwhelming to start a music blog and monetize it, it’s really not hard. You just have to be dedicated and persistent to get started and follow up as you go. If you follow our guide, you should be able to have a successful music blog.
You can even earn an income from your hobby or passion using the information we have provided.
