How to Build a Music Website From Scratch in 2026

Why should I make my own music website?

Bandzoogle, Wordpress and Wix websites tend to look a lot alike and can be functionally and visually boring and often do not convey your artistic vision. Additionally, they often have good features, but they’re often a bit more expensive and do not always prioritize your artistic vision… Trust me…you can do better! And often, you can even SAVE MONEY on recurring costs associated with other providers!

You see, these tools and all in one hosting platforms do provide good services, but often they lack one major thing. Originality! Something that conveys your message to the world! So, let’s learn how to save time, money and your artistic vision. Even better, if you do it right, you can draw even more traffic than you would from some other services.

Decide What Your Music Website Needs to Accomplish

It’s important that you have a goal when building your website! And that varies depending on your art style, income model, and just general goals! If you are looking to book more gigs then that requires a certain type of call to action from trying to get more streams or growing your follower count on social media.

Choose your primary conversion goal

If you are trying to:

  • Get more gigs -> Create a comprehensive booking form and follow up plan with an auto reply email!

  • Get more streams -> Create a funnel to streaming platforms with as few clicks as possible, and create content that draws clicks!

  • Sell merch or digital/physical records -> funnel users into your merch store and make sure whatever they click is loaded into their cart and easy to pay for!

  • Grow your email list for future endeavors -> create compelling onsite content that people want to see more of and be a part of!

  • Grow your socials -> create quality content and make it visible from your site! Then funnel users to your social accounts!

Each of these require different types of setups, but are feasible! My site is built to be a project launch point and repository. It has CTAs that are meant to draw people to use my services and skills, but we are early learning how to accomplish this. Now we have to get a little more technical though…

Choose a Domain Name for your music website

This is an important part of the puzzle, but…some believe it’s more important than I do. Most times, a less common TLD (Top Level Domain) will bring good results!

What is a domain?

A web domain is the current backbone of the modern internet. Without domain name convention and the related services, we’d be typing in seemingly meaningless numbers to browse the internet for webpages! Without being very technical, a domain is the name you lease to tell browsers of the internet “Over here! You can find me over here!” Otherwise, you’d be giving the equivalent of latitude longitude to get people to come to your site!

So what domain should I get?

The illustrious .com is highly coveted and considered the gold standard, but if you are here…you can see that you likely are not at a .com URL at least at the time of this writing. It’s far more important that you pick something that isn’t confusing, excessively long or someone else’s intellectual property (cause they could take it). Besides that, it is important that you are able and consistent with staying on top of paying your domain lease. With classic Web2, which is still very relevant, you don’t OWN your domain…you lease it from companies know as registrars, many of which own DNS (Domain Name) servers across the internet. Registrars like Squarespace, GoDaddy, Domain.com* and more over own the top level domains that we use today. So pay your dues, or someone can buy your domain out from under you!

The Techy bits…

So now you have to pick a few different things…

  1. Your tech stack

  2. Your hosting platform

  3. Your roadmap

This may seem scary, and this is an oversimplified list, but it’s not scary! And the good news is that you will not be doing it alone! You’ve got me, the documentation of developers before, thousands of online forums and AI to help you!

What’s the tech stack?

The tech stack is the building blocks you use to develop your web application. And yes, you are building an application. It’s likely a simple CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) application, but it’s an application nonetheless!

Here’s the tech stack I recommend for starting out and keeping your overhead as low as possible!

Coding Languages: PHP, JavaScript

App Frameworks: Laravel + Filament + Livewire UI

Database: MariaDB, SQLite

Webserver: Nginx, Apache

Misc: Docker, SMTP server, VPS.

JavaScript will be the programming language that will allow you to make interesting visual and interactive things happen on the user interface, and PHP will be the programming language that will handle the things happening on the server side. Laravel is a web development framework that comes with a relatively trustworthy Authentication and MVC (Model View Controller) system. This allows you to safely interact with the SQL database and make changes as an admin or have user accounts! The database you use is up to you. Depending on how many people are visiting your site you may pick SQLite or MariaDB (one over the other).

Plan your roadmap and layout!

This is a VERY IMPORTANT STEP! But, with a little help from AI, it’s not a very hard one. Here’s where you decide what pages, functionality, structure, and flows your website will have. For our case we will use AI to help us plan this (it’s hard to be a project manager, developer, musician, artist, Ui/Ux designer and system administrator all at once). Then, we’ll follow the roadmap that a trustworthy Ai provides after reading it and ensuring the scope (what your app will do), style and flow (how you interact with the app) and roadmap (gameplay and order of implementation) are accurate and acquirable.

Time to build your website

So…. Now it’s time to start building your site. Where do you start? Well, from here the ball is in your court. While I recommend learning the languages and frameworks you’ll be using, I also recommend using Ai to help you code! Here’s the thing, lots of developers claim Ai doesn’t code good…but if you’ve never been a web developer before, then it probably will do better than you first try. But ask the Ai to teach you! Use it as a resource to learn what you are doing! Try coding parts by hand, and having Ai review why you changed. Have it make the first pass and read what it does and research why it did that! Ask Ai why it makes certain decisions (you may even help it not make bad decisions). Ultimately, you should be making the decisions and Ai should be your tool for bringing those decisions to reality. When coding with Ai, it is important to be very verbose with your requests though! For example, when you start laying out your roadmap, provide the Ai with the tech stack you intend to use and ask it to help you format a prompt for a coding agent that ensures that it has all the scope, tech stack, security and other things that your app will need. Don't be scared to use Ai! Just use a trustworthy platform, do your homework on what you are asking it to do, and then dive in. This alone will save you time and money!

Alternatively, code it all by hand! This is one of the greatest way to learn how to build apps! You will become intimately familiar with the ins and outs, strengths and limits of your frameworks and much much more. BUT beware because the death of many projects is time and scope drift. Give yourself strict limitations on functionality so that you aren't adding more than is necessary and biting off more than you can chew. Nonetheless, this is how the great programmers and artistic web designers of the past have created some of the most compelling websites as an ART FORM instead of just a useable web app.

Regardless of whether you or Ai build your site, be sure to research security and the data security laws of your country and other countries where you may be collecting data from.

I built it...Now what?

Now we have to get that webapp online! This is where you need to make sure you have picked a hosting platform, a webserver and a deployment method. Here are a few options you can use to deploy your webapp at an affordable rate!

  • IONOS or Hostinger VPS with Docker or Apache/Nginx

  • Hostinger Shared Hosting Business Plan

  • Render web hosting

  • Laravel Cloud offers affordable managed hosting for your Laravel app as well

There are plenty of other options, but I personally am a Hostinger or IONOS guy, just because I have used them.

How do I go live?

The most month to month affordable option is to spin up a IONOS VPS. A VPS is a Virtual Private Server. You access it over SSH in many cases, but there are plenty of articles and videos online about how to spin up your app over SSH. In this case, we will spin up the VPS through the IONOS user portal -> Login to the server over SSH -> Upload your files OR pull them from a repository (if you used one) -> Install dependencies and run the builds -> Make sure your webserver (Apache or Nginx) is running and pointed at your
application -> Check your configurations and app environment files -> Setup DNS and SSL certs.

The yucky part...

I kinda left you hanging, didn't I. Research the steps above and find articles, ask Ai, watch videos and make it happen. Here's the thing, getting the app up and running can look very different for different applications, builds and environments. There are not 2 applications that are likely identical...BUT there is not likely an error message that you are seeing that someone else before you hasn't already had to face. From here you are on the cusp of greatness, pride, constant worry and also likely saving a lot of money while really standing out from the generic sites others have been using all around you. Debug that app, get it live, make sure you turn off debug and turn on production afterwards...and then.... Feel the immense pride that comes from building something! You are an artist! You know this feeling. When the solo comes out just like you intended, when the crowd sings your lyrics, when the song or piece of art comes together. Cherish this moment! And then go find all the things you want to change and all the posts you want to write and setup Google Analytics haha! You're a web dev now. Cograts! You just added another hat to the pile.

Here’s the good news!

If you have any questions on how, what, when, where and why you can and should build a website from scratch, send me an email! OR if you need help, I’m available for hire! Just reach out to me @ micahrandolph@bytemonster.co or through my contact form on this site! I can help you build what you have in your head!