You may want to create a blog for many reasons, including:
Share Passion For Music: A blog about music can be a great way to express yourself artistically or personally. You can express your feelings, share memories, describe what songs mean to you or criticize certain songs.
Connect With Other Music Fans, Artists, and Writers: A music blog allows you to nurture a community that shares your passion for songs and artists. You can also support budding musicians and collaborate with them.
Highlight hidden gems:You may want to create a music blog that covers a niche or genre you feel is not covered enough.
Get Published as a Music Critic/Journalist and Start Building a Career: You can create a reputation as a music critic/journalist/influencer by sharing reviews, recommending songs/albums, and educating blog visitors. This can lead to career options, free access to events, or income from advertising, affiliate marketing or sponsored content.
How to Plan Your Music Blog
To ensure your blog’s success, you need to plan well. Follow the steps listed below.
Decide what types of music you will cover
Define what genres and styles you plan to cover in order to create a consistent and clear focus for the content of your blog. A niche music blog is more likely to be successful. If you can tailor your blog to the music style that people love, it’s much easier to make them care about what you have to say.
Choose a niche that is narrow, like a subgenre or a particular artist from a particular city, or learn to play an instrument. You can grow over time.
Consider the following:
Your expertise and interests- Bloggers produce a great deal of content. Your passion and knowledge can help you create unique content your fans will love.
Who do you want to follow? You can choose the fans who are interested in the genres or artists that you enjoy.
You can also check out subreddits or communities on Reddit to find out what people are interested in.
Decide whether this will be a hobby or something you want to monetize
Think about why you’d like to start a blog. You may treat it differently if you were doing it as a hobby than if you were creating a source of income. You might write articles as a hobby whenever you have the urge to do so. A monetized blog, on the other hand requires that you are intentional with what you publish, build relationships with industry leaders, and post frequently.
Consider the different income streams you could use to monetize your site. Here are some:
Use affiliate marketing to promote music-related products, brands or services.
Post sponsored content by relevant brands.
Promote your musical services such as a music producer or an instrument instructor.
Decide whether this will be a solo blog or if you’ll recruit editors and writers to contribute
Your goals and your resources will determine whether you work alone or with editors and writers.
You will be able to control the content, style and direction of your blog if you choose to run it alone. It can be a great way to maintain a personal touch. It can be demanding, as you will be responsible for every aspect of the blog – from writing, editing, and marketing to monetization. A solo blog can be fine as a hobby.
It can be a great way to reduce your workload, and gain new perspectives. You’ll need to know how to hire the best people, create guidelines, communicate effectively, and have enough money to pay them.
Decide whether you’ll be covering a local, regional, national, or international focus.
A music blog that focuses on local content will usually cover your immediate city or community. This strategy can help you build a strong relationship with your local audience, as well as quickly establish relationships with local businesses, artists, and venues. If you do not live in a large metropolitan area where there is a vibrant music scene, your revenue may be low.
A regional focus can be a province or state, or even a particular part of the country.
You will have to spend more and work harder to be noticed, but it could lead to a greater pool of sponsors, advertisers and connections in the industry.
A music blog that has an international focus can be more difficult to run than one with a national focus. It can be rewarding because of the many opportunities that come from other countries.
You can make any decision you want, but it’s important to know the scope of your choice.
Create a name for your blog
choosing a blog name is the final step to creating your music blog.
You should keep your blog name short and memorable, ideally between one and three words. You can use abbreviations as well, such as SA Beats instead of San Francisco Beats.
Here are some tips to help you choose a name.
Mix words. Popify is a mix of pop and magnify.
Include music-related words in your name, such as note, melody, and sonic.
Think about your audience for example, Country Girls for a blog aimed at girls/women that love country music.
When naming your niche, use words like genre or audience. But leave space for growth as you grow your blog. For example, Country Girls can cover female country musicians, country music that women love, country music about women, etc., but CountryGirlsinCharlottesville might be too narrow.
After choosing a name, you should check its availability by using Google Search or a trademark search. This will ensure that the name is not already trademarked.
Voice and Tone
Many of the most influential music magazines in history had their own voice and tone. Pitchfork, for example, incorporates storytelling into its edgy tone. The tone can also change from lively to critical, depending on the category of content.
Your blog’s voice and style are a reflection of you. It should be consistent and recognizable and reflect your brand’s image, goals and values. Examples include being friendly, knowledgeable and relatable.
The brand tone is your attitude, expressed through your voice. For example, you might express empathy or enthusiasm. Imagine mood swings depending on what you’re trying to say. For example, for listicles, you might want a more happy tone and for industry news a more formal tone.
Use the exercise “We are BLANK but not BLANK”. This will help you define your voice. This is how it works:
Choose a primary adjective to describe your voice and tone
Choose another adjective to clarify your tone or voice. As an example, you could say “We’re informative but not dry”, or “We’re concise but not lacking depth.”
Repeat this process several times to get a feel for the voice and tone of your blog.
Note If you plan to have more than one author for your blog, this exercise will be even more important. Consider documenting voice and tone guidelines so that your writers will be able to establish a consistent voice.
Choose between WordPress.com and WordPress.org
WordPress is the most suitable option to create your music blog. It has visually appealing themes, pre-built layouts and audio and video embed functionality.
WordPress.org contains the WordPress software and plugins as well as the community. WordPress.com provides managed hosting for WordPress developers and website owners.
You can use WordPress to design your website. However, you will need to choose a reliable hosting provider and take care of the security and updates for your site. WordPress.com offers the best security and speed, as it is created by the same company that developed the WordPress software.
WordPress.com has plans for blogs of any size. Here are some options for you:
WordPress.com allows you to start a music blog without charge. It’s a risk-free way to start.
By upgrading to the Personal Plan ($4/month), you can remove advertisements (and get other features).
You can choose the Premium plan ($8/month) if you want complete control over style and ads. If you need more design flexibility, choose the Premium plan (8 dollars/month).
The Business Plan ($25/month), is ideal for those who want to upload themes or plugins from third parties.
