One convention is that the artist's face is the main image on the screen and it's a picture of them that is easily recognisable. This is Ellie Goulding's website.
Not only does she have a picture of herself, she actually has the picture that is used on the album cover. This helps to reinforce her album and promote sales.
Another big convention of a musicians website is that it is filled with media and as you open the main page it is the first thing you see and it instant grabs your attention.
Here we can see Mackelmore & Ryan Lewis as well as Ben Howard. With Ben Howards website the watery part is actually a repeated snippet of his music video. It begins to play as you open the page and below that is his latest music video, which is the first thing you see with Mackelmore's website. Because a video can be a big selling point forcing the music video into someones face can be very affective.
Another convention is a biography page or a page with details about the artist and their lives. This convention doesn't normally stretch to a band because you tend not to want to get to know each member of a band, rather you would just want to listen to them. Whereas with a solo artist, you can have a more vested interest in their life because it influences their music more. The bio page is usually just a preview of their biography, bands tend not to make biographies so their would be no point.
A further convention is the selling of merchandise on their page. The reason artists sell merchandise is because it's free advertising when people are seen wearing it and it is a source of revenue.
Here we see Fall Out Boy's Merchandise page. It usually consists of T-shirts because they are cheap to produce, easy to ship and suit most people. On every page, even the merchandise, the band are pumping their latest album and releases.
The final convention is the use of other social media, like social networking sites.
Bastille seems to break all of the home page conventions but it excels with providing extra social media for users to connect with. They hav elinks to Tumblr, News, A sign-up page, Contact, Vevo, SoundCloud, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.
These mediums can be used to track who the target audience, interact with your audience and advertise on the correct platforms.
