[smeyer]

My guess is that this is a funky artistic choice, and that they used to have a "normal" webpage.

I checked with the wayback machine, and it looks like my guess is correct. I clicked randomly into an archive a few years old, and here's 2016 website looking a lot more like what you describe http://web.archive.org/web/20160303191156/http://www.portuga... .

I guess an audience that you left out in your description is people appreciating the experience of looking at the website or the artist themselves wanting to make a statement. I think the band has thoroughly "made it" so to speak, and doesn't have to worry too much about most of what you mentioned. They do list tour dates in their google sheet and also can sell out pretty large venues easily, and I don't think there are any festival planners who don't know who Portugal, the Man who have any chance of nabbing them for their festival.

[senthil_rajasek]

Ahhh that totally makes sense. Thanks for researching and sharing.

Portugal The Man is "made" but my concern was that the new bands that are still struggling to make it should not take inspiration from this and create a google sheets website. That would be terrible for their career.

[al_borland]

I would hope that a website wouldn’t make or break an artist. It’s about the music after all. Outside of looking at this post, I don’t think I could tell you what a single musician’s webpage looks like. It’s not something I ever look at.

For concerts, I tend to look for who is coming to venues near me, rather than looking at 200 band websites and hoping they are both on tour and near me.

Do most people go to the band’s actual site to learn this stuff?

[senthil_rajasek]

If you already know a band's music or an artist work it may not matter as much.

But for artists who are not well known, a website can help make a great first impression.

I found this Apple Music for artists page a good intro on why promo/marketing materials are important.

https://artists.apple.com/support/1121-why-an-electronic-pre...

[hnlmorg]

For a great many people, the artists own website is the last place they’d look for the artist.

YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify would all rank much higher.

Even as someone who doesn’t do social media, I would still turn to YouTube and Spotify before I’d even bother looking for their band website. In fact the only time over ever visited an artists website in the last 10 years was to buy merch from their official stores.

Furthermore, people’s first impression of an artist is seeing them live at a festival, as a support act for another band they went to see, or even just that artist playing in the bar. Maybe they heard that artist on an independent radio station. But it would always be about the artist. Literally no one would have heard a band name and think “I will check out their website before I bother listening to any of their songs”. (Or at least if anyone does, they’re not the kind of people who give a crap about music so wouldnt be buying their albums nor going to their gigs anyway).

I’m not saying your advice is bad per se, just that you’re vastly over exaggerating the importance of a good website for people’s perceptions of an artist.

[internet101010]

Maybe I am not thinking through this enough but... why? Social media accounts and artist pages on streaming platforms showing up at the top of Google search is probably more important than their website.

[adamm255]

Yep. When was the last time you went to a bands actual website to find info? Spotify has tour dates. You’d follow them on Instagram, they share music and dates, links to merch stores there. The website itself means pretty much nothing these days so you can take some creative angles. So many smaller bands I’ve worked with who are growing don’t have one.

[ivlad]

Surprisingly, I am listening the latest Rolling Stone album right now and I wanted to check if they will tour our town. I went to their web site to check it and to my surprise I was not able to find any tour info there.

Not a counterpoint, just coincide I guess.

[runeks]

Maybe they got tired of paying some web dev money every time they needed to update their page. With Google Sheets they can do that themselves.