What’s an EPK?
Using Electronic Press Kits, promoters can easily share all the most vital information about your music. Learn all about making an EPK with our quick guide!
With a press kit, music artists can really show off their successes. Creating an EPK is an essential way to promote your music for free.
But what does a press kit for music look like? Read on for some top tips for making a Electronic Press Kit that’s professional and lets your artist brand shine.
What is an Electronic Press Kit?
A press kit for music is usually created by an artist, or the artist’s record label team. An EPK is a bit like an online resume for your music, putting all the most important information about you as an artist in one place.
It’s a way to gather all the best things about your music and show off your achievements to date. A good EPK will help you play more shows and get featured on music blogs and on curated playlists.
The point of a press kit is that it is one link that you can send out easily. Whenever you have news to announce like a new release or tour dates, an EPK gives all the background information. Usually it takes the form of PDFs stored in a zip file within a Dropbox or Google Drive link; or a standalone website.
Free website builders like Wix are good options to try making your own EPK! There are also templates to be found online, like these from Bandzoogle.
Who do I send my EPK to?
The pack is made to be sent to music industry professionals like festival bookers, radio and playlist curators, and music journalists. Therefore, the kit should be slick and organised, keeping with your artist brand in theme and tone of voice.
Readers should instantly know exactly what you’re trying to get across so they can choose what information they want to pass on to their audience to properly promote your music.
What’s in an EPK?
Imagine you’ve got five minutes with the industry professional you’re sending your EPK to – what are the most important things you want to tell them about?
An Electronic Press Kit should have examples of your music, a bio with your story and shows you’ve played, streaming stats, and social media following data.
The music
If you’re making a digital press kit it’s safe to assume your songs are online for the world to hear. If they’re not, check out RouteNote’s free music distribution to release your music to all the major streaming platforms. Then, in your EPK you should put links to songs that have been the most popular, pointing out any impressive stats.
Make a playlist of your best songs for ease-of-listening for the promoter looking at your press kit. If you haven’t had the chance to gain lots of followers or streams yet, don’t worry. Include the songs that give the best representation of your music genre and sound.
Artist bio
An artist bio is the story of where you’re from and where you want to go, told in an engaging way that’s easily repeatable. This should be written in the third person (he/she/they). Check out our top tips here:
Every part of the EPK should make it easy for the booker or journalist to get the info they need. When it comes to your bio, add different versions so there’s no extra work cutting down or fleshing out the content. A one-paragraph bio, a medium paragraph of over two paragraphs, and a long bio with four paragraphs or more.
Make it easy for everyone to find you
As well as gaining new fans you want other potential music industry contacts to be able to reach out to you without having to scrabble around looking for you first. In your press pack you should make it clear what your contact details are, so the reader can find out more about and also pass the information on to their audience.
That means putting all your social media handles in the EPK, from Instagram to TikTok, as well as links to Spotify and other streaming platforms, YouTube, artist and label website links, and email addresses.
To make this all simpler, you can make a Smart Link from our partners PUSH.fm. Smart Links are a single landing page with all your important links in one URL.
Artist photos
The photographs in your EPK should be artist images and album artwork. Make sure the images are high quality as you want journalists and other promoters to be able to reshare them.
Videos
Your EPK should have your music videos embedded, as a visual representation of your branding and image, offering an additional glimpse into your personality.
Don’t stop at just sharing the video – you could put in a few making-of images giving a peek behind the scenes, especially if you’ve been making DIY music videos by yourself. Speaking of, you can find tips for making your first music video here:
Show off your achievements
What success have you seen so far on your artist journey? Did you draw a massive crowd at a major festival, did a journalist say something nice about your music, have you won any industry awards?
Include data and analytics about your previous releases. Be sure to mention your achievements, big or small.
New moves
An EPK is similar to a music press release in that you need to show the promoter exactly what breaking news you’d like them to share about you. So tell them about new releases, whether that’s a single, EP, or album, in a quick elevator pitch style, shout out about a playlist add, or appearances that are coming up.
Make a checklist of all of the above, and you can’t go wrong. A professional-looking EPK means you can contact promoters with confidence.
RouteNote’s award-winning unlimited music distribution is flexible, fast, and free.