Linktree or your own website
A link page exists because Instagram allows one URL and you have eight things to point at. It solves that in about four minutes, for nothing, and it looks the same on every phone. That is a real product doing a real job, and most artists should have one.
The question is not whether to use it. It is whether it should be the address that everything you print points at, because that is a different job and it does that one badly.
What a link page is genuinely good at
Speed and zero maintenance. You add a link and it appears. Nothing to host, nothing to renew, nothing to break at two in the morning. For a producer with two releases and a SoundCloud, that is the correct amount of website, and paying a monthly fee instead would be a waste.
It is also honest about what it is. Nobody arriving from a bio link expects a body of work. They want the new record, and they get it in one tap.
The address is not yours
Every flyer, every press mention and every bio link you have ever sent points at a domain somebody else owns. That is the entire argument, and it has three practical consequences.
The first is search. Someone who hears you in a set and types your name later gets whatever Google has decided represents you. A link page gives a search engine almost nothing to work with: a list of outbound links and a line of text. Whatever authority those links earn accrues to the platform, not to you.
The second is permanence. Platforms change pricing, terms and ownership — Bandcamp changed hands twice in recent years and every artist relying on it felt the uncertainty. A domain you registered yourself cannot be repriced or discontinued.
The third is that you cannot grow into it. When a promoter asks for press photos at print resolution, a technical rider and both a short and a long biography, a link page has nowhere to put any of it.
What a promoter does with your link
They open it on a phone, between other things, looking for four specifics: what you sound like, where you are based, who to email, and whether you are currently active. A link page answers the first and, if you thought to add it, the third.
The rest they have to ask you for. That is a message you both have to write and a delay in a decision that was already close.
The cost is not the subscription
Link pages are free or nearly free and a website is not. That comparison is real, and for a lot of artists it settles the question in the link page’s favour, correctly.
What the price does not show is the work you keep doing by hand because the page cannot do it: re-sending the same photos, retyping the same biography, updating dates in four places, explaining where things are. If that is happening every month, the subscription is not the expensive part of your setup.
Use both, and point the link page at yourself
- Keep the link page in the Instagram bio. It is good at that and changing it costs nothing.
- Make the first entry on it your own site rather than a streaming link.
- Give every release its own page on your domain, with the streaming and store links on that page.
- Keep dates, press assets and the booking address only on your site, so there is one place that is right.
When a link page really is enough
If you release once or twice a year, do not play out, and nobody is asking you for a press kit, then a link page is the right answer and a website is a chore you will not keep up with. Register the domain anyway — it is around fifteen dollars a year and it stops somebody else taking your name — and point it at the link page for now.
The moment that changes is not a size of audience. It is the first time someone asks you for something you cannot send them in one link.
Common questions
- Can I just use a link page as my website?
- You can, and plenty of working artists do. It stops being enough at the point where somebody needs to find you without already knowing your handle, or needs an asset from you at short notice.
- Does using a link page hurt my search ranking?
- It does not hurt you. It just does not help you. The links pointing at it build the platform’s authority rather than yours, so when someone searches your name you are relying on your streaming and social profiles to rank rather than on a page you control.
- What if I put my own domain on the link page?
- That fixes half of it, and it is worth doing. The address becomes yours and stays yours if you move. What it does not fix is the content: there is still one page, no permanent URL per release or show, and nowhere to put a press kit.
- Do I need both, or can I drop the link page?
- Keep both. The link page is a good front door from Instagram and takes seconds to change. Just make sure the first thing on it is your own site.