10 Best WordPress Themes for Bands & Musicians 2015

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Premium WordPress themes for bands have come a long way, and today there are many affordable ($40-$80) options that, quite frankly, kick ass.

We recently took an in-depth through at dozens of premium WordPress themes for our band’s new website. While we’re not going to reveal our final choice, we will say this was our short list. Why listen to me? I’m not just a musician, I build WordPress websites using premium themes for a big part of my living! But don’t take my word for it, each of these themes has the reviews and sales to back up the hype.

Decibel

This is one of our favorite band themes, and has every feature you’ll need to run a killer official band website: WooCommerce for eCommerce sales, Visual Composer for fast and easy page layout, an event list, and a custom audio player. It also integrates with MailChimp for all your email marketing needs.

It’s a new theme with great reviews, and the look is fresh and modern. Throw a video background on your homepage and you’ll look like a rock star. If you don’t want to geek out with code and configurations, this is the theme to go with. Even a novice web designer can work with this, and an expert web designer could build a site in hours with Decibel.

Soundboard

We were impressed with Soundboard’s out-of-the box beauty and functionality. The home page does a great job of bringing all the important content and features of your site to the foreground. This one has user-friendly written all over it. Design-wise, it’s not a stunner, but what it lacks in pizazz in makes up for in utility. Everything your fans needs is always an arm’s reach away, and any kind of artists could customize this to be exactly the kind of place your fans can feel like they’re getting what they need.

Speaker

Speaker is a one-page website, which means your navigation will link further down the page, and your browser will automatically scroll down to that location when you click the link. It’s visually impressive, so if you have really strong art and design behind your music, this is a great theme to showcase your originality. Of all the themes we looked at, it’s the most like a blank canvas that’s waiting for your look and feel.

The theme covers all your bases — music player, merch sales, tour dates, etc. The only caveat is that because it’s a one-page site, the eCommerce checkout process is a little clunky. Overall though, it’s a great all-in-one theme for the novice web builder and the band or musician that’s got great visuals, videos and lots of music to share.

Lush

This is one of the most minimalist themes we looked at, and as a result, it’s one of the sexiest. This theme pares your site down to its essentials but still covers your need for eCommerce, streaming music and video, and the other important features for musicians. The discography feature is a nice bonus, and the site looks pretty great on mobile, which is no small consideration.

Lush is versatile — great for an artist just starting out that doesn’t have a whole lot to share. The design works great for single-album artists, or artists who want to focus on the current release rather than the busier layouts of other themes, which display lots of information simultaneously. Popular and well-reviewed, we highly recommend this one.

Muzak

While it has unquestionably the worst name of the bunch, Muzak stands out for its simple and sexy design sense. Out of the box, this is going to look better than so many artist websites out there. One of the unique and exciting features of this theme is the way it features the promotional flyer for the next upcoming show on the sidebar. This event-smart site is perfect for the musician who spends plenty of time on the road, and has an established career. It’s got eCommerce functionality, but like many of the themes on this list, it’s easy to lose the shopping cart when browsing away from the store section.

IronBand

If you’re looking for strong, imposing aesthetics, look no further than IronBand. The clean, minimalist approach and powerful use of a thick condensed font combined with lots of white space makes this theme stand out.

The theme trends toward the minimalist side, but feels more substantative than other similar sites because of its bold typography. We could see this as the perfect theme for a rock band, industrial band, metal band, rapper, or any genre that features an aggressive, in-your-face approach. It’s an impressive canvas that needs quality photography or artwork to maximize its appeal.

Muse

Muse is a theme geared toward the mature band that’s been around a few years. It’s truly a content showcasing theme, and demands you load it up with lots of content, links to social profiles, products, etc. So while we’d caution against its use for the act that’s just starting out, for the established act, it’s quite an impressive user experience.

The theme is unique in its one-page, non-scrolling home page design that feels like a dashboard with tons of options. Clicking deeper into the site presents stunning masonry layouts — so, again, lots of content is key with this one. It’s the kind of theme that will shoot your “Average Time Spent” metrics through the roof. We recommend this one for engaging with a sizable fan base.

Jam Session

Unlike its name might suggest, this theme does not go on forever. In fact, the home page is a great, minimalist one-page design that’s perfect to showcase your latest video. The deeper pages have a nice, clean masonry layout with convenient tag-based navigation. It’s got all the tour, discography and shopping features you need, though we did find a few quibbles: The shopping cart is almost impossible to access if you navigate away from teh store, and the music player leaves a little something to be desired. Nonetheless, this theme makes up for that with mobile-friendliness and intuitive navigation.

Noise

This theme has a lot going for it: An embedded music player that hangs underneath the main navigation, great, bold typography and design, and every core feature a band needs. It’s definitely geared more towards DJs, a fact most evident in the “popular tracks” feature which shows fans the most-favorited tracks of the week and month. If you’re looking for a few extra bells and whistles to set your site apart, or especially if you’re a DJ, check this one out.

Clubber

I bet you couldn’t tell by the name, but Clubber is purpose-built for DJs and EDM musicians who live on the road. It’s a high-energy web workout. The theme is very translation-friendly for international artists, and really does a fantastic job of putting live events front and center. Its tight design looks great on desktop and mobile, a thoroughly modern design aesthetic that’s clean and professional will compliment modern music perfectly.

The one big caveat with clubber is that it lacks eCommerce functionality, so if you want to sell on your site (as most of us do), you’ll need to build that customization in yourself.

Bonus Theme: Live!

This theme was created in 2012 but has been updated as recently as April 2015, and we couldn’t recommend it more. It’s served our band well for a few years and your band or act will not regret setting your site up on it. We picked it because it’s very easy to customize with just a tiny bit of CSS knowledge. You can bend and twist this theme into any form you’d like. Why are we abandoning it? We just wanted a new look, and getting a new theme is much faster than customizing this one to be something it’s not. But we’d be remiss not to mention it. Happy site building!