We have been recently working with our partners at .buzz to put together a comprehensive package of bundled services for upcoming artists, musicians, and bands. The project is called: Music BuzzPages and you can learn more at: http://get.buzz/music in a few days. The really cool part of this project is that we’ve actually been working with some of Rock Music’s royal family, Ruth McCartney (Paul’s sister). Her companies, McCartney Multimedia & iFanz, have been providing some of the oversight and direction for the project as well as Excel Strategies.
The artists pages are built upon WordPress CMS but have some very specialized features allowing them to connect a wide variety of third party services that cater to musicians and artists. Some of these services include: Soundcloud, Reverbnation, and iTunes. We also allow for artists to pull in their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts for use on their websites. Artists can also sell music directly from iTunes and Reverbnation on their websites. Some other features include; Facebook Page Photo Gallery Integration, Instagram Photo Integration, Google Calendar Integration, and much, much, more!
For our staging site for this project we used; meetthebeatles.buzz, you can check it out online now! We’ve also launched websites for several artists while the project has been in it’s beta release. You can stay tuned to get.buzz/music for the latest list of sites that have been launched so far!
Below you will find the first draft of our whitepaper for this project:
WordPress Content Management System
- Powered by Studiopress Genesis Framework
- Widget Driven Design & Layout
Custom Plugins for Musicians / Bands
- ArtistDataPress Compatible: Display your ArtistData show feed on your WordPress site and customize how it appears. ADP now uses the HTTP GET function and SimpleXML to fetch and display your ArtistData XML feed.
- Soundcloud Compatible: SoundCloud Master is a light weight and shiny clean code wordpress plugin WIDGET that you need to show off and sell your music.
- CD Baby Compatible: Embeds the CD Baby HTML5 Player into WordPress using the cdbaby shortcode. Example: [cdbaby]DA770544-7C91-45D9-8372-104BCD7FB47F[/cdbaby]
- Reverbnation Compatible: Reverbnation Master plugs-in perfectly into wordpress and allows you to display all the reverbnation juice inside any widget template position.
Multiple Options for Tour Dates / Upcoming Shows
- Gigpress Plugin: GigPress is a powerful live performance listing and management 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. GigPress is intuitive and easy-to-use.
- Alternative Calendar Option: This plugin is geared toward bands and musicians to manage and display a calendar of their gigs within WordPress. It’s meant to be as easy as possible for both the musician and the fan. It even manages venue data complete with mapping and ticket links.
- Google Calendar Compatability: Show off your Google calendar in grid (month) or list view, in a post, page or widget, and in a style that matches your site.
Synchronize w/ your Social Media Pages…
- Social Sharing: Whether you want to get people sharing, grow your fans, make money, or know who’s reading your content, Shareaholic will help you get it done. See configuration panel for more settings.
- Embedded Twitter Feed
- Embedded Facebook Page Feed
Manage & Display Photos
- Slideshow: Easy to use slideshow plugin. Create SEO optimised responsive slideshows with Nivo Slider, Flex Slider, Coin Slider and Responsive Slides.
- Facebook Photo Gallery Sync: This wordpress plugin fetches the facebook albums or the whole galleries from your Facebook Fanpage/Fanpages and display them on your site as albums and galleries. You can add as many albums and galleires as you want. It will generate the shortcodes automatically which you can copy/paste into your post or page
- Flickr Compatible: Simply easy to publish your Flickr photo albums on your WrodPress blog site
- Instagram Compatible: This Instagram plugin is an Instagram widget and shortcode which allows you to display photos from an account on your website. It’s responsive, flexible, easy to use Instagram widget with most needed features.
Website Optimization & SEO
- Google Analytics & Google Sitemap Compatibility: Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics. After enabling this plugin you need to authenticate with Google, then select your domain and you’re set. Automatically generates XML Sitemaps for your site and notifies search engines when they’re updated.
- Website Performance: Website utilizes a very fast caching plugin for wordpress to help pages load faster and the website to perform better.
