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Musician Websites

Blogged into web design & culture on 07/29/2005 | comment

Last week I saw Bob Dylan play at the Orpheum in Vancouver. What a show! One of rock’s greatest legends, somwhere in his sixties, the dude can still perfom. Not only that, but the guy’s all class. He wore a New Orleans style cowboy hat (don’t know if that’s actually exists, but that’s what I’m calling it), along with a black tuxedo with red sequens lining a 70’s style collar, and some fancy black-leather boots.

After the show, I decided to go check out his website to see what he had been playing at other recent shows. Upon arrival at www.bobdylan.com, I was taken aback by how poorly designed and coded this rock and roll icon’s website is. Mind you, the front page is ok, but dig a little deeper and it gets ugly. So Bob, if you read this give me a call and I’ll hook you up with the goods.

Anyways, this got me to thinking about other musicians and bands who, given their popularity, I know can afford decent websites. Turns out there’s a few gems out there, but most are total tag-soup design disasters. What gives?

Here are my A and B lists for musician websites:

My A-List

Bands/Musicians with great sites

My B-List

Bands/Musicians with ~~disgraceful~~ awful sites

What are your opinions? Who is on your A-list and who’s on your B-List?

Disclaimer: The sites on my A-list included sites that are either great (or better than average) from either a coding and/or design perspective. Oh, and I am not a hippie, I just listen to lots of hippie music!

Your A-List:

Bands/Musicians A-listed by blog9 commentors (in no particular order)

Go ahead, add to the list using the comment form below.

Don't believe me? Here's what others are saying...

The Meeting Places

— huphtur 07/29/2005 #

Stone Temple Pilots have an OK site. Not impressed with Green Day’s site, but that Beatles site is getting a little better. And that Radiohead site is just plain weird.

— Aaron 07/29/2005 #

Nice All CSS layout site, small amount of flash

— Christopher Pastore 07/29/2005 #

Oooops… Here is the url:
http://www.thatgirlband.info

— Christopher Pastore 07/29/2005 #

it’s all flash butfrom a design perspective its really delicate and got a good feel.

http://www.fagan.com.au

— Ben 07/30/2005 #

being both a musician and a designer, i’ve had the pleasure of doing a few band sites:

www.badreligion.com
www.damsel-fly.com
www.latitudeband.com

there aren’t too many xhtml/css band sites though… hopefully that changes soon. it’d be much better to take up bandwidth with music downloads than bulky table-ridden html pages and spacer gifs.

— paul 07/30/2005 #

Denison Witmer
Amandine

— kris 07/30/2005 #

Pi Recordings

— Nick 07/30/2005 #

Glad to see that there are some bands out there using standards. Paul, I�m with you � hopefully it does change soon that more do.

Nick, cool concept you guys have going.
Aaron, love the header on your site. When did Cardigans ever stop being cool?!

Keep the sites coming people. IMHO, Flash sites can make my A-list with graphic design that's impressive. However, those sites that can integrate flash and standards belong at the top.

— Terry Evans 07/30/2005 #

We’ve done a couple for well-known UK bands (XHTML and CSS):

The Libertines and Thee Unstrung .

Administrators let loose on them now though, so not sure if they’re intact!

Good list by the way – I’m very interested to see any more links posted here.

— Colly 08/01/2005 #

Thanks for your feedback Colly.

I�m going to add two more to the A-list pile: Lillja and Tori Amos

— Terry Evans 08/02/2005 #

Libertines: ++

Also: Sloan has some neat stuff going on. Made by the awesome dudes at silverorange who are also known for the mozilla.org redesign.

— Rob Mientjes 08/03/2005 #

Fall out boy have a pretty good site

http://www.falloutboyrock.com/

— Cathy 11/17/2005 #