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A previous version of this article first appeared on Creatorbeat.
I’ve been playing in bands for a large portion of my life, and usually, I’m the most tech-oriented in the group. This has almost always meant that not only was I a musician, but I also was the web designer, graphics guy, and whatever else that may come along with that. I’ve spent way more time than I would have liked to in the search for the best WordPress music theme for whichever band I was in at the time, but I’ve found some great stuff out there.
I’ve put together a list of some of the newer (or at least recently updated) premium WordPress music themes that I liked. While I haven’t made this list quite as narrowed down as I would if I were searching for a theme for one of my own projects, it wouldn’t make much sense to others if I had. What I did verify, however, was that the themes are still being updated within the past year or so, they look very flexible and modern, and most will support WooCommerce for any band merch or self-hosted digial download needs you may have.
So without further ado, let’s get into this!
Table of Contents
Tune – One-Page Music WordPress Theme
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve gone through this whole shebang before, and the first WordPress music theme I wanted to showcase was Live! by WolfThemes. I ended up picking it for the site of my old band, ForNeveR. Unfortunately, Live! is no longer updated, having last been touched in October 2015. It’s the only one of their older themes that haven’t been refreshed, and it’s a shame.
But there’s a new WolfThemes WordPress music theme called Tune, and it looks really good. What they refer to as a “multi-concept one-page music WordPress theme”, it lives up to the name. There are several demos and configurations for any part of the industry you could want, from bands to managers, to labels, and even recording studios. Full responsive design, WooCommerce integration, tons of extra plugins for further functionality, and great support from my first-hand experience.
Oh, and get this: There’s a theme demo called “Remember Myspace?”. Yeah, it’s pretty much what you’d think, but modernized. Really though, I’ve been a fan of WolfThemes for a while now, and this new theme looks awesome. So go check it out and see if it will make its way into your new site.
Mixtape – A Fresh Music Theme for Artists Bands and Festivals
Mixtape was a new theme when we first put this list together. Released in May 2017, it was very modern looking and has kept that design aesthetic even until now. This WordPress theme will most likely cater to the more pop/hip hop/electronic/hipster sort of acts with the way the demos are configured.
But it has everything you’d need, with outstanding galleries, discography, shop, social, and tour dates support. Whether you’re a band or solo artist, this theme will definitely get the job done in style.
Anthem – Music Band and Musical Events WordPress Theme
Anthem is a bit more subdued, but it’s even more new than Mixtape with a July 2017 release. Shipping with music and video players, album/discography functions along with galleries and tour date management, its five homepage layouts will work for just about any musician or event needs.
FWRD – Music Band and Musician WordPress Theme
No doubt about it, FWRD looks really good. The author, IronTemplates, has been making excellent WordPress music themes for years now and FWRD is no exception. This is a very modern and flat theme, and with Visual Composer and Essential Grid included you should be able to get up and running in no time with a stunning site at the end.
Lush – Music Band and Musician WordPress Theme
Another IronTemplates theme, this has been around since 2014 and is always updated. One of the more popular WordPress music themes out there, it’s very flexible, has several different styles, and just gorgeous. With all the features that IronThemes usually includes, Lush has you covered.
Trio – Band WordPress Theme
One of the older themes on the list, Trio is thankfully still being updated regularly. You won’t see much modern flashiness here, Trio is a more traditional band website theme, eschewing parallax scrolling, one-page design, and full-screen splash pages for a much more straight-to-the-content approach.
The theme is fully color-customizable and has all your audio/video player needs met, along with photo galleries and the other usual suspects. I do find a certain appeal in the more simplistic design amidst so much “Oooh shiny!” of new modern themes, and this one is just clean, fast, and gets the job done.
AQURA – Music Bands Musicians and DJ’s WordPress Theme
And just like that, we’re back to the new stuff. Aqura is definitely a bit different from the rest of these themes, but that’s a good thing. It looks more like a photography theme, or perhaps a portfolio theme. But don’t let that fool you, this is for musicians.
The demos cater to different sorts of artists and acts, and so far in this list is the only one to feature BandsInTown integration to help your social reach and let people know when you’re touring in their area. There are several layouts, WooCommerce support, Retina support, and even the ability to sync your other social presences to be the content for your blog. Not too bad, right?
Musisi – Musicians Bands Theme
Musisi isn’t necessarily flashy or crazy unique, but it looks slick. This is a legit theme that’s fast, highly customizable, responsive, and easy to set up. Unfortunately, it’s one of the few without WooCommerce support for slingin’ merch, but maybe the authors will add it eventually. That said, it’s still a gorgeous theme.
JamSession – Music and Music Band WordPress Theme
This one’s a bit different. It’s not visually as modern as some of the other themes in this list, but it still stands out with a fullscreen homepage mode that looks good, and puts social and tour events at the bottom of the frame where it’s easy to find.
There are other homepages, one with a scrolling page and one with a scrolling page and minimal menu, but JamSession does an outstanding job of displaying content, such as galleries, tour info, discographies, and more. If you’re looking for something a bit out of the norm, give it a glance.
Vice – Music Band Dj and Radio WordPress Theme
Vice stands out as a very modern, very polished, and flat theme, doing the one-page style of site quite well. It will allow for actual pages as well, but the option is there if you want a one-page.
The theme is crazy modern and just looks stunning. You’ll find all of the post types for artists, albums, events, podcasts, releases, and more along with a continuous player and video backgrounds. Vice even supports radio feeds, and is really usable for pretty much any sort of entity within the music industry, albeit traditional terrestrial radio stations won’t find the content to be as dense as they usually like to pack their websites.
The standout feature here, however, is the add-ons for physical documents. The author has created InDesign templates for business cards, presentation brochures, and one-page press kits that match the WordPress theme perfectly.
Once you’ve customized the colors for the site, just make the matching changes to the document templates, and you’ve got instantly matching hardcopy to go with your website. These are purchased separately, but I’ve got to say that this is extremely rare in WordPress music themes, and absolutely refreshing to see an author take this extra step.
Pendulum – Responsive Music WordPress Theme for Bands and DJs
Pendulum is one of the oldest themes on the list, however it’s still being refreshed as necessary, with the last update being in December of 2016. For a 7 year old theme, that’s well within the acceptable range. And somehow it still looks really good for being as old as it is.
While it does have almost all the features that a modern theme would have, it’s sadly missing WooCommerce compatibility, but that doesn’t surprise me due to its age. That said, the Scamp player that it comes with is quite excellent, and it is responsive and Retina-ready. Don’t judge this one by the age, it still will throw down with the best of them.
Odio – Music WP Theme For Bands Clubs and Musicians
Good god is this theme sexy! One-page, multi-page, whatever you want. It’s fast, lightweight, incredibly full-featured, and it has its own distinct feel for sure. It’s also one of the very few themes on this list that feel like they cater more towards rock/metal bands without feeling overly cliche’d and extremely dated.
But that’s not to say it won’t work for pop or EDM or whatever you happen to play, so don’t worry. All in all, this is probably one of my more favorite themes of this style on the list.
SoundRise – Artists Producers and Record Labels WordPress Theme
IronTemplates shows up in the list yet again with an absolute monster of a theme. While yes, this theme would work well for bands, IronTemplates has definitely created something specifically for the business side of the industry. Catering towards labels, promoters, managers, and A&R, SoundRise is perfect for highlighting your roster of bands and artists.
The theme has all the custom post types you’d need for displaying and organizing these sorts of content and does support WooCommerce despite not having a shop anywhere on their demos. Speaking of demos, there’s a bunch of great ones to get you started, so take a look if you’re in the market for a label-esque theme.
Rebellion – A High-powered Theme for Musicians Bands and Record Labels
I’m sure that when you clicked on this post, you were hoping to find your next theme. Hoping for something that looks amazing, functions awesome. Hoping for something to make your band look as great as you sound. Well… Rebellions are built on hope (You had to have known that was coming, right?).
Rebellion is a rock-oriented theme with a bunch of great demos to get you up and running as soon as possible. And they’re all substantially different, but all great. WooCommerce support, tons of page templates, fully customizable layouts.
Connect with a variety of music shop platforms, including App Store, Google Play, Bandcamp, Spotify, Amazon Mp3, and Deezer. Again, this is one of my favorites on the list because of how flexible and clean it is, so give it a look.
Zona – Multipurpose Music Theme
Another flexible theme for all sorts of uses, Zona is fairly simple and minimal, but also doesn’t shy away from the flashy. As of writing this there’s a light and dark demo, with a third to come. It’s also yet another theme built around the excellent Scamp player, however this is a much newer theme than the aforementioned Pendulum.
There’s great integration with other online music platforms such as Soundcloud, Heartthis.at, Shoutcast, and Google Drive hosting. Overall, quite a well put together theme for anyone in the industry.
Beat – One-Page Music and Band AJAX WordPress Theme
Beat is a bit different, as far as the header goes. It opts to put a focus on content upfront atop a hero image, video, or color, and then below is more of the typical one-page style. If you find the typical choices of one or the other not hitting the spot, this may be your answer.
It’s also one of the few that tout a version for a different CMS, so if you’re looking for a Joomla music theme (or might be moving over to Joomla at some point), maybe this is the right choice for you. But as for the WordPress version, what we have here is a clean, light, and fairly unique theme that looks pretty easy to set up.
Lucille – Music WordPress Theme
Lucille is a gorgeous all-purpose WordPress music theme. There are a handful of demos that are geared toward certain feels or types of sites, but really this theme could be used for just about anything creative.
There’s the usual complement of features that any band or artist could need, and the theme is quick and fluid. With the included Visual Composer page builder, you’ll go from install to completion with minimal effort, maximum results. Definitely not a theme to go unnoticed.
Croma – Music WordPress Theme with Ajax and Continuous Playback
Croma is another excellent IronTemplates theme that has seen continuous updates and fixes ensuring current compatibility. There’s a built-in Ajax audio player, Woocomerce compatibility, a well-built events system, and a great selection of super clean demo templates to get you started.
Mozo – Music
Mozo is a full-featured WordPress theme with everything you’d need for a musician or band. The theme is equipped with discography custom post types, a media player, video player, tour/events modules and full compatibility with page builders and many other standard WordPress plugins.
The theme loads very quickly and is highly customizable with a front-end drag-and-drop interface. There are also custom icons included for Spotify, Soundcloud, iTunes and Google Play Music stores and more.
Playbit – Music Oriented WordPress Theme
Playbit is a robust music WordPress theme from ThemeRegion that doesn’t go overboard. It contains all the expected features–music player, events, WooCommerce functionality, integrated Twitter functionality, discography post types, and a fast responsive design.
It’s not updated as frequently as we’d like to see, but it does get semi-regular updates applied. There are several one-click demo installs available, including a one page version, and is easy to customize thanks to the VisualComposer front-end designer.
Musart – Music Label and Artists WordPress Theme
If you’re looking for a very minimal and clean WordPress theme, Musart is a good choice. The layouts are fully customizable and offer a paged or one-page design with all of the requisite music WordPress theme features like media players, discography, events, photo gallery and more. T
here is also integration for your Twitter and Instagram feed and the theme is fully responsive, looking great on all devices.
Music Club – Band | Party WordPress
GoodLayers’ Music Club theme has been around for a while now, but it has been constantly updated and is an excellent choice for any band or music-related venture. The theme is entirely responsive and updated with modern design and offers all the expected music WordPress theme features.
You’ll find a sticky music player at the bottom of the page, a well-designed ticket status system, and a drag and drop page builder to get everything just right and you can use a boxed width or full page layout as well.
Musico – Music WordPress
A newer theme, Musico is a gorgeous and modern WordPress theme. It’s actually one of the few that makes use of Elementor as the main design tool instead of something like VisualComposer or WP Bakery.
But the theme also comes with tons of pre-built layouts for everything from the home page to the gallery layouts and even the music player, all of which look stunning. Of course the theme is fully responsive, and despite being built with Elementor is actually very quick. This theme has it all and looks amazing at the same time.
Soundboard – a Premium Responsive Music WordPress Theme
Soundboard is easily one of the oldest themes in our list having been released in 2012. That fact is also quite apparent in its design, but there’s still a place for a traditional band site WordPress theme in the current era.
It’s a simple design that gets the job done with efficiency, and thankfully the theme is modernized with responsive design, a dark/light mode, and color customization. If you’re looking for a bit of a throwback to a simpler time, this may be your theme.
Onair2: Radio Station WordPress Theme With Non-Stop Music Player
We’re including OnAir2 in our list because, while it isn’t necessarily a band or musician WordPress theme, it is a rather excellent radio station WordPress theme.
It’s built out with custom post types for listing the shows on your station, the show schedule and other events, podcasts, and supports pretty much any streaming provider like ShoutCAST, Live365, IceCAST, and more with a header-based stream player. There’s even support for WooCommerce and donations so you can monetize your station.
Decibel – Professional Music WordPress Theme
We really like Decibel as it feels like a spiritual successor to their previous Live! theme. There are tons of features available for any musician, band, label, or really any other industry organization.
The theme is responsive and loads quickly, and comes with a large number of demos and prebuilt templates for you to use when designing your own site–everything from a one-page layout to a ‘zine-style blog page, old-school side navigation, and even a coming soon page built right in.
Epron – Music Theme for WordPress
Another older entry, Rascals Themes’ Epron is a multipurpose theme built around the music industry. It’s a more traditional boxed layout with section widgets as opposed to the current trend of large sections but it still looks good and is updated frequently enough.
In other words, it’s an older code, but it checks out. You’ll find all the expected features for a music theme, no matter whether you’re a band, solo artist, label, or agency.
Muzak – Music WordPress theme
Another older, more traditional portal-style layout, Muzak still brings a really distinct and vibrant feel to a site. Yes, there’s nothing fancy or gimmicky here, but there are a good amount of page templates for each of the 6 custom post types along with pages, home pages, and events listings.
You’ll also get a fullwidth template, a lightbox and native Google Analytics integration included to help reduce your plugin count, and a blazing fast lightweight theme. As far as older themes go, we still really love this design with no hesitation.
IronBand – Music Band & DJ WordPress Theme
Another IronTemplates theme, IronBand is another classic style theme but still holds up quite well, especially in the performance department. IronTemplates does keep up with maintenance on the theme to ensure it’s secure and compatible with modern WordPress, but don’t expect too many new features added to this theme.
If you dig the look of an older era of design, IronBand may be a fun option. It can still be a viable option for you as it still has everything you need for a band or musician website.
SONIK: Responsive Music WordPress Theme for Bands, DJs, Radio Stations, Singers, Clubs, and Labels
Sonik is a multipurpose music theme with a very distinct style. The theme ships with 12 different custom post types for showcasing albums, podcasts, events, artists, galleries, shows, products, and more, ensuring that anything you’d need to showcase can look great.
The theme isn’t the most performant compared to some others, but you’ll find that there’s a lot of effects and animations going on to impact that. Even with that said, it still loads quickly and is responsive to look good on any device. Sonik is full-featured and customizable with a ton of flexibility for any project.
Spectra – Music Theme for WordPress
Another theme from Rascals Themes, Spectra looks really good. Like, really good. There are a ton of page and section layouts to let you customize your site just how you like. You can build a one-page site, a traditional multi-page site, or a fullscreen page for a bit of a different design.
And it may be a weird little thing, but the parallax scrolling in this theme is ridiculously great. And of course, it has all the normal features for a band WordPress theme, so all your bases are covered. We definitely think this is one to not skip over.
Meloo – Music Theme for WordPress
If there’s one thing that Rascals Themes loves above all, it’s animation effects. Meloo drives that home, but it’s actually really well done in this theme. Yes, it may be a bit of an impact on performance and page load speeds, but so far it feels alright as long as you treat this theme right.
But again, those animations! This theme really does knock it out of the park in the style department, and has all the features that the other Rascals themes have. If you’re looking for something striking and fairly modern, check this one out.
Choosing the best WordPress music theme for your band
There are honestly quite a lot of music WordPress themes out there, and that means that finding one can often take days–or even weeks. You look for something that will offer all the features you may want, such as a music player, good photo gallery, eCommerce compatibility, social sharing.
But most of all, you want something that will match your band’s image, and look impressive while separating you from the rest of your scene. Something that identifies your band as unique, edgy, and professional. In other words, people know that you’ve got your stuff together. Let’s quickly touch on some of the key features you’d be looking for, in addition to the overall look and feel.
WooCommerce compatibility
I always look for WooCommerce compatibility so you can not only sell physical merch (physical CDs, shirts, hats, etc) but also digital downloads and tickets (both with the right WooCommerce plugins, of course).
This allows you to have full control over your sales, as opposed to relying on iTunes or Google Play Music and those platforms taking their cut. Even if you don’t plan on using it right away, having the theme be compatible means that it’s covered if you change your game plan.
Social connectivity
Having a theme with built-in integrations to the various social media platforms is helpful. Having integration with the music-specific services like Soundcloud, Beatport, Bandcamp, etc, is even better, even if only having included icons in a matching style:
Some themes will go beyond this and allow for the importing of existing content on other platforms, including embedding music from Soundcloud and other places.
Music player
There are a bunch of music players out there, some better than others. You’ll likely want to stay away from Flash-based players, as Chrome is now blocking Flash, and it doesn’t work on mobile. HTML5 players are the way to go.
Finding one that looks good, imports music if you need it, and has the extra features you need will go a long way to helping your site. You may want one that allows for rating or comments a la Soundcloud. Or one that will provide download and/or purchase links to iTunes/etc.
Releases/Albums/Discography
Most of these themes do offer a way to display and promote your released albums. Usually this is done in a discography format, with each album being a custom post type, and then populating the album tracks into that post. Album art, links to listen/buy, you name it. If you’re a new band you may not have any releases yet, but keep this in mind for down the road.
Do I need a music-specific theme for my band?
The short answer here is no. You can do everything that you’d want to do in a music theme with a multipurpose theme or any other WordPress theme with some custom post types. You could build your own discography types, use an events plugin, get a separate media player, install WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads or something similar on your own and still get the same end result.
It may not be as cohesive or fast, but you can definitely do it. But to be honest, the effort spent with the manual or piecemeal method is probably not worth the tradeoffs. If there’s a WordPress theme you absolutely love or does one very specific thing that you absolutely need, then it may be worth it, but in general, a music theme would be the easiest method (if you don’t plan on switching themes often, that is).
A general portfolio theme would also work well, as you can create your discography using the portfolio function, but you’ll still be left to add in media players and music-specific social networks.
Final thoughts
So there you have it, our pick of the best premium WordPress music themes for musicians, bands, artists, managers, labels, recording studios, clubs, you name it. There are a metric ton more (especially older, unsupported themes), but this is definitely a great start, and some of the more up to date themes available. These will make sure your band stands out as professional and well put together, providing all of the features you would need at the time.
Have you found WordPress music themes that you like? Is there one we’re missing on this list? Do you have questions about site design for band websites? Post in the comments below and let us know your thoughts and we’ll answer to the best of our abilities.