bandsitelive.com
There’s a reason they’re called “struggling musicians.” For local musicians, trying to make a name for themselves often means more than perfecting their art — it also means self-promotion, and that can be expensive, says neighborhood resident Reagan Judd. Judd manages the local band Airline, and he and his business partner, Derek Bumpas, are both music lovers who also custom-design websites. “Musicians have livened up over the last five or six years and started taking promotion into their own hands,” says Judd, and that includes the Internet. But if they want all the custom “extras” like email lists, photo galleries and streaming mp3s, the price can climb into the thousands. “After we did two or three of these, we realized these guys are all asking for the same thing,” Judd says, “so we thought, ‘Why don’t we give them a website with all the tools for less money?’” The result was bandsitelive.com, essentially a DIY website kit with tools and templates plus hosting for $20 a month. Roughly 15 local bands and musicians have signed up, including neighborhood resident Creede Williams, and BandSiteLive also has recruited 30 or so more from around the country and even the world. “We put a lot of money into this company,” Judd says, “so we’re both hoping this can be the thing we focus on.”
