Launching my new music site

Happy New Year!

In the last post, I wrote about how I was looking to relaunch my music site. Building a site in Notion gave me a way to prototype some ideas, and gave me the push I needed to work on something new.

Building a site from a few Notion databases is a pretty quick way to try an idea. The ideas I had went well beyond what Notion allowed me to do, but putting all of my tracks into a database and linking them to albums was a fun way to spend an afternoon.

Notion charges £12.50/month (or £10/month if you pay annually) for a public URL. I tried it for a few days, but decided to switch back to the Free plan.

It’s not a lot each month, but I already pay for a lot of other things at a similar rate - so didn’t want to add another long-term. Plus, Notion URLs are a bit long - and Notion didn’t do what I wanted.

Instead of using WordPress or Notion, I decided to try building a custom site (using Laravel, a PHP framework) and came up with this:

Things I’ve included

• a list of all releases (Albums, EPs, singles)

• a list of all tracks - 76 in total

• a Spotify player on every track and release page - here’s my 4th album as an example. I’m still working on Soundcloud.

• release artwork - here’s my 3rd album as an example

• an About page

• I've even included the Bandcamp album from my alter-ego, Roads to Atlantis

You can check out the new site here: GFD Music

Coding is fun!

If you wish, you can build your own site with a wide range of different tools. Squarespace, Ghost, Wix, WordPress, Notion, and loads of others.

But I like having more flexibility - and building a site in a framework such as Laravel allows me to do a lot more.

Plus, coding your own site is a lot of fun!

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