I started my first website in 1995, pretentiously titled "JazzSite". At that time, the web was brand new, HTML was in its infancy and there were no rules. No one else nabbed the name "JazzSite" (until later when they did) -- so why not?
I had, at the time, the grand vision of a "virtual jazz club" where jazz fans and players could socialize, post messages for each other, listen to clips, and promote each other's gigs. A tall order, especially given the state of technology at the time -- we were all still using dial-up modems at the time at the blazingly-slow speed of 28.8kbps (or if you were lucky enough to work at a computer store, you might've been one of the few early-adopters of 56k modem technology) -- no broadband, no cable modems, no DSL, no satellite, those were the days, ahhh!
Thanks to the Wayback Machine, there is still a copy of that old site out there. The last time I updated that one was I think 1997, at the crest of the forefront of the Swing Revival when a lot of us were seeing our jazz audiences grow from 20 to 200 to 2000 overnight. Still very primitive by today's standards, and ugly too! Some of the links don't work anymore but there's still some content up there so check it out...
The Petepetersen.com domain was started in 1999, and the early incarnations of that site were fairly primitive by today's standards too. That was back before anybody knew what an MP3 was, and YouTube didn't exist yet... We had RealAudio (now known as RealPlayer) and Quicktime for our audio clips, a gig calendar that was updated the old fashioned way by changing the HTML every time a new gig was added to the calendar, the standard "business card info" of address and phone number (remember when people still used their phones for calling other people to talk to them?) and a few low-res jpg images.
Since those days, the website has been maintained and updated, new tricks added (remember when javascript mouseovers first came out, and every page had images that would change to other images as the mouse moved over it?) and in 2010 I completely overhauled the entire site to make it easier to find important content by changing the layout to vaguely resemble a social networking site everyone else was using - but the whole thing still basically functioned as an 'online business card' as it always did.
Lately it occurs to me that people use the web in a completely different way than they did back then; we have plenty of Social Networking options (facebook, twitter, etc), lots of Content-providing options (YouTube, Instagram, SoundCloud), some very solid e-commerce options to sell CDs and merch (iTunes, Amazon, CafePress), a very nice Musician-friendly gig-advertising site (Reverbnation) and even Blogging options such as this one. People are also using smartphones and tablets to surf the web in addition to desktop computers. So why is the average musician website nothing more than an online business card? Why not take every advantage of the new web?
So as I overhaul the site this time, I am trying to remain conscious of the new ways people are using the web for information, and what they will see when they first open up the petepetersen.com page:
First off, the new site will have a portal page with easy links to my Facebook page, my Twitter feed, this Blogspot, my AllMusicGuide entry, my ReverbNation, my SoundCloud, my YouTube channel, etc. Those sites are where most of us spend our online lives, so that's the first thing people will see, right there in front. The front page will also have basic contact info (phone # etc) of course, and then it will have a "click to enter site" link that could possibly determine whether they want to go to a version of the site optimized for smartphones.
One of the things everyone should keep in mind when designing a website is what the purpose of that site is. What do people need to see there, and what is the intent? For anyone in the creative arts, especially in music, this is a difficult question. We need our site to be an 'online business card' with our contact info, and we also need to display samples of our work and let others know about upcoming opportunities to see and hear us. We need to sell our music (a primary source of income!!) and other merchandise. Most of us also teach, so it's important to have resources for students, as well as a curriculum vitae displaying prominent credentials as a teacher or instructor. All of this information splays out in many different directions, so one purpose of a musician website should be to organize information and make it easy for everyone to find exactly what they need to find. And finally, a good music website should be a resource for content, something to draw traffic in. Something like Charles McNeal has on his page, with a huge resource of transcribed solos. Or Dave Valdez's Casa Valdez page. Or Ralph Patt, whose "Vanilla Book" is still a great resource for finding the basic chord changes for a ton of jazz standards. Or these guys, with hundreds of pages of advice for young jazzers. Those sites all get huge amounts of traffic, much more so than the typical "online business card" site that most musicians have.
So here are a few of the things my new website will have:
- Contact Info (phone, address, email, etc)
- Audio Clips, Video clips, Photos and other "sell the band" content
- Dynamically-updating content (blog, RSS, gig calendar, etc)
- Information about various services offered (arranger, orchestrator, freelance sidemusician & woodwind specialist, Instructor/educator, etc)
- Samples of arranging/orchestration work and an easy explanation of rates/prices/etc.
- Links to e-commerce sites where my for-sale items can be purchased (iTunes, Amazon, cafePress, etc)
- Promo (press quotes, hi-res images, etc)
- Business essentials (stage plots, sample contracts, riders, etc)
- Biography/discography/Curriculum Vitae
- Educational resources (pdf exercises, transcriptions, course descriptions, handouts for students)
- Some new and unique eye-popping content that you can only get right here at petepetersen.com
And yes, that stuff ALL needs to be there, and it all needs to be easy to find!!! A Herculean effort if ever there was one. But it is possible. Take a look at Jay Thomas's page, for example.
So as we go forward, I will be making changes to my website. I will gladly be accepting help from my daughter, Alyx Jolivet, to design the new site. She knows what she's doing, yo! If any of you out there reading this have any additional suggestions for content, ideas, design, etc, please feel free to leave them in the comments section - I look forward to hearing from you!
See you next time!!!
Pete
