Best Wordpress Themes For Bands

Here are what I think are the best Wordpress themes for bands, musicians, rock groups, chamber orchestras or anyone eles involved with music that needs a web site. To see some of these Wordpress themes in action or why I think Wordpress makes excellent sense for musicians, check out my article where I rave about Wordpress Blogs For Bands.

StudioPress Church .

Don’t be fooled by the name, the Church theme is a very cool theme and makes a great band web site. Designed by StudioPress, formerly called Revolution Themes, Brian Gardner and his team continue to make clean Wordpress premium themes with beautiful code and great Search Engine Optimization (SEO.) Because this is Brian’s full-time business, he is very committed, offers support via a members-only forum, and makes sure the themes are constantly upgraded to ensure compatibility with all Wordpress updates.

You’ll need the Viva Thumbs plugin to make adding the home page thumbnails easy. This will save hours of time, otherwise you have to fiddle with Photoshop resizing, and custom fields, which just make it that much harder to do. And remember, if its too much, you won’t do it.)

Tubular by StudioPress.

This theme was actually developed for use as a Videoblog, but I think it’s a great theme for bands too. It’s eyecatching and simple, so doesn’t appear overwhelming. Just put your latest video, or a video of your band performing at a gig, or rehearsing in the top spot. Want repeat visitors? Change your video often, and invite fans to submit thier videos of your band in concert. Throw a contest and tell them that you will feature their video on the home page – that will get them spreading the word. Do this once a month and you will have many happy fans!

The image on the left is actually a screenshot from a Wordpress blog site I just finished for a comedy hockey video series called Ripper Hockey. It is a very mild customization of the Tubular theme; we changed the header area, making it taller and wider, put a tagline in the top right created in text so that Google would know what the site is about, and moved the RSS subscribe links. Hopefully this will give you an ideal of how just a few mild customizations to a well-built theme will give you a completely personalized look.

Wordpress Remix

Remix is simple, clean and comes with la choice of 10 different home page layouts and 20 different single page layouts, which make customization super easy. Try style 4 or 5 , which feature images and are a bit less corporate looking. I like the featured text areas which also are great places for you to publicize upcoming gigs or special events.

This premium theme has some extra functions that are useful for band web sites like integrated Photo Galleries and Events pages, so it makes it super easy for your band to keep your fans informed with the content that they keep coming back to see.

You can use the theme as is, or change the colours via an easy theme options page.

Tribal Music

By Gorilla Themes will get you a cool site with built in music player from Mixpod so that you can stream your music.

This theme will need some graphic work to swap your own logo and background into the design, but once you do that, you will have a super cool site which places your music upmost and centre.

Aperture Theme

By Woothemes. This Wordpress theme is actually for a photography blog, but will work great for a band web site who have lots of pictures.

Don’t have lots of pictures yet? Ask your fans to send them. They’d be uber proud to see their pictures on your site.

Use one of the photo sidebars for your GigPress or Gig calendar plugin.

Abstract by WooThemes

In order to make this theme your own, just change that background image and go wild.

Ideas: Match your background to your current CD cover.

Want fans to keep coming back?

Change your background every week to match your posters.

Tell your fans to collect the series of backgrounds, or allow to download as wallpaer.

Do a contest and get your fans to design you a background.

Do a contest and feature a super fan every month on your background.

See how fun it can be?

Why do I think these make the Best Wordpress Themes For Bands? Let me tell you:

these are image heavy – people want to see pics of you when they come to your band site. They also want to see NEW pics of you when they come, so keep on adding pics. That’s why Wordpress is cool. It is easy to update. Update your band’s web site often, and your fans will come by more often. And they will love you more.
the sites are easy to customize – for the StudioPresss themes, just switch the background for a totally new look. Switch is so that it matches your most recent CD (you’ll actually need to also change the CSS for some of the themes, so they display an image vs a colour only, but it’s not that difficult – most web developers can help you with that.)
StudioPress sites have great Search Engine Optimization capabilities. That means Google love.
Sign up to our mailing list right up top. That is numero uno. Get your fans’ email addresses so you can send them news. They want it. They want to hear from you. They want to hear from you often.
they’re more than a blog, allowing you to control your home page so it looks more like a traditional web site.

Have I missed any? What do you think are the best Wordpress Themes For Bands?

And help me out. I am currently designing a Wordpress theme for band sites. What other functions do you think would be cool for Wordpress themes to have for band sites?