Web Design: Music Sites

I bought this book at the weekend to give some ideas and inspiration for the website I am to create.

It breaks down many websites into the brief and constraints the designers were given and the final product, with information on the development and reasons behind changes given by the accompanying text written by the designers.

From reading it, there is a definite link between all the sites and the music they represent. There is also a lot of emphasis on internet communities.
"Arguably, if you don't run some sort of social-networking community around your artist, you're off the pace".
I think that this will be important, especially for a little website, having some sort of 'community' feel, however simple, will open it up.

This could be achieved by:
Mailing lists to sign up to.
Link love (hopefully getting it back)
Other internet presence, e.g. myspace/facebook.
Updating frequently...news / blog type thing.

I am also thinking if there needs to be a way to listen to the music?
I think the people that will buy the tapes WILL know the music (hence how they would find the site). However, they may not know all the releases and it is likely that if they like one tape they would like another.
So perhaps a music player would be something to look into? or direct links to where you can listen to the bands?

Here are some of my favourite sites from the book:

This is the website for "Bill Harley Music". I like the desktop effect and the invisible navigation bar. I like the idea of highlighting the navigation text by a block background.


'Cess Music', minimal design for minimal techno. I think the two-tone colour works really well here. It adds a lot of interest visually, but still keeps the site clean, it also lends itself to the text to have highlighting colours. I think the text also works great here. It is really clear and easy to read. The grid layout also helps this. The text that is smaller helps to explain how the navigation works, but basically fades into the background if you are used to the site because of it's weight, colour and size.


Kraftwerk always have great visuals for their music. This is a pretty simple idea and it looks great. It is kind of limiting though if you need to add more visuals, it could start to look very cluttered.


Arturo Fuentes's website. I think this looks really interesting. It looks very conceptual though, and may be difficult to look at and get your head around for navigation. What I especially like about it is the waythat bits of information come up in windows, and it might be nice to make the page look like it had windows, to separate individual parts of the site.


The website for The Copper Temple Clause. This website is so simple and clear. The black and white aesthetic (including the photographs) makes a sort of retro style statement, and the scrawled/hand-written text goes with this really well. The navigationbar is at the top and the page is divided into three columns. This website it total functuality but still looks great. Maybe not 'innovative' but still . . .

This website for Lorraine is really colourful and playful. The header takes up a lot of the page but I think that if the amount of information you have to give is limited this works nicely and once again the main page is divided into three. The navigation bar at the top is understated. The text is quite subtle, but highlights on rollover. The page of images also divides the page well, everything is balanced.


Website for Madonna. It has a clear aesthetic and the navigation header at the top holds a lot of information in a small space and relies upon geometric shapes and patterns and then the three tones of colour to separate and make the information distinct from one another.