An EPK is not a brochure. It is a work document for someone who has to make a decision fast: book this band or not, cover this single or not, add this act to the bill or not. The person opening it is usually busy, usually on a phone, and usually looking at several artists in a row.
So the job is simple. Put the things they need where they will look for them, in the order they look, and delete everything else.
The order people actually read in
Watch how someone uses a press kit and it is rarely top to bottom. It goes more like this.
First, what is this. Genre, location, format. One line, maybe two.
Second, play the music. If they cannot hear something within a few seconds of landing, a chunk of readers leave.
Third, look at a photo. Writers need an image that will survive being cropped into a banner. Bookers want to see what walks on stage.
Fourth, read a bit. Only once the music has passed does the bio get read, and even then mostly skimmed for facts.
Fifth, check you are real. Live video, past shows, releases, anything that shows you have done this before.
Sixth, find the contact. This is the step people fail most often, which is absurd, because it is the cheapest one to get right.
Build the kit in that order and you have done most of the work.
The short list
One line that places you
Name, where you are based, what you sound like, what you are promoting right now. Something a booker could paste into a listing without editing. Resist the urge to invent a genre. If you cannot describe the music without three hyphens, you are making the reader do work they will not do.
Two touchstone artists are allowed, and they help, as long as they are honest and not wildly out of your league.
Music they can play immediately
An embedded player or a link that opens straight into a track. For released material, a streaming link is fine and tells them you are distributed. For unreleased material, use a private streaming link, not a file download. Nobody wants a zip folder on a phone.
Lead with the song you want them to hear. One track, clearly marked. Then a link to the rest if they want more. A kit that opens with an eleven track album and no guidance is asking the reader to guess, and they will guess wrong or not at all.
Label every file properly: artist name, track title, and whether it is a clean or explicit version. Writers working to deadline will thank you silently and never mention it.
Photos that can be used
Two or three images, not twenty. One clean portrait or group shot, one live shot, maybe one with room around the subject so it can be cropped wide for a header.
Make them downloadable at full resolution. A photo that only exists as a social media thumbnail is useless to anyone laying out a page. Include the photographer credit next to each image, because publications usually need it, and sort out the rights to reuse your photos with whoever shot them. If there is any doubt about what you are allowed to license on, get qualified advice rather than guessing.
Two bios, short and long
The short one is a few sentences and gets copied into listings and newsletters. The long one is a few paragraphs for anyone writing something longer.
Write both in third person. Lead with the present: what you have just released or are about to, what the record sounds like, what you are doing with it. The origin story, if it is interesting, goes later. Most origin stories are not interesting. Formed in a shared house, bonded over records, started playing shows. Everyone did that.
Facts beat adjectives. A producer’s name, a venue you have played, a label you are on, a tour you supported: those are facts a writer can use. “Searing, anthemic, genre defying” is noise that cannot be checked and will be cut.
If you are a band with lineup changes, keep the member list accurate and current. It is the detail that most often goes stale.
Proof you can do this live
One video. A full song shot from a fixed camera with decent audio beats a flashy montage. Bookers want to see the room respond and hear whether the vocal holds up.
Under it, a short list of notable shows or past support slots, and upcoming dates if you have them. No need for every open mic you have played. Pick the ones a stranger would recognise.
Links and contact
Streaming profiles, your main social accounts, your site. Then, unmissable: who to email, and for what. If one person handles press and another handles booking, say so. If it is all you, say that too, with one address.
Put the contact at the top as well as the bottom. The person skimming on a phone should never have to hunt.
A press section, if you have one
If you have genuine coverage, list the outlet names with links. No need to pad it out. If you have none yet, leave the section out entirely rather than filling it with quotes from your own social feed. An empty press section says nothing. A fake looking one says something worse.
What to leave out
- Long downloadable PDFs. They are a pain on a phone and go out of date the moment you send one.
- Autoplaying audio or video. It makes people close the tab.
- A folder with every photo you own. Choose for them.
- Technical riders, stage plots and input lists on the public page. Keep those in a separate booking packet that you send when a show is actually being discussed.
- Streaming numbers, follower counts and chart positions unless they are genuinely strong. Modest numbers in a press kit read as an apology. If the music is good, let the music do that job.
- Paragraphs of adjectives, mission statements, and influences lists longer than two names.
- Anything you would have to explain in a follow up email. If it needs a caveat, cut it.
One kit, not one per release
The common mistake is treating the EPK as a release asset, built fresh each cycle, abandoned once the single is out. Then the next release comes and you start again, and the old link you sent to twenty people now points at something a year out of date.
Build it the other way. Two layers.
The evergreen core. Bios, photos, members, links, contact, live video, press history. This changes a handful of times a year at most.
The current block. Sits at the top. Release title, release date, the focus track, the artwork, a short paragraph on what the record is, and one line on what you are asking for: playlist consideration, a premiere, a support slot, a review. Swap this block out each cycle. The rest stays put.
The practical gain is that your EPK link never changes. You can put it in your email signature, in your booking inquiries, in your socials bio, and it is always pointing at something current. Rebuilding the whole kit per release also means you rebuild it badly, because it is always the last task before a deadline.
Swapping the current block belongs on your release timeline alongside artwork delivery and pitch deadlines. Our release planning checklist covers where it fits, and the free release planner will lay out the weeks for you from a release date, with no signup needed.
Format: a page beats a document
A simple web page you control is the best default. It loads on a phone, you can update it in minutes, and you only ever share one link.
A shared folder works as a backup for the heavy files: full resolution photos, logo files, high quality audio. Link to it from the page rather than making it the front door.
If a specific outlet asks for a PDF or a particular format, make one for them. Do not make it the thing you send by default.
Tailor the email, not the kit
You do not need a separate press kit and booking kit in most cases. One good page serves both if it has live video and show history alongside the music.
What changes is the message you attach it to. A booker needs to know draw, availability and what you travel with. A writer needs the angle and the timing. Three lines in the email, then the link. Keep the kit stable and vary the pitch.
The same discipline applies when you are pitching playlists, where a short, concrete description of the track does far more than a long one. We go into that in how to pitch your song to Spotify playlists.
Keeping it current without thinking about it
Set two habits.
Once a cycle, when a release goes out, swap the current block and add the new release to your links. Ten minutes.
Twice a year, do a sweep of the evergreen core. Are the member names right? Is the photo still what you look like? Does the contact address still work? Send yourself the link from a phone you do not normally use and click everything. Dead links are the single most common fault in an otherwise decent kit.
If you already run a weekly admin slot, fold the sweep into it. Our post on building a consistent music marketing routine has a workable rhythm for that kind of small recurring task.
Where SongPilot fits
SongPilot is an all-in-one artist management platform for independent artists, managers and labels. It is pre-launch, with a waitlist and invites going out in signup order, so the following are planned capabilities rather than things anyone is using yet.
A few of them touch this topic. Public artist and member pages are part of the platform, which gives you somewhere to point people. The media studio is built to cover album artwork, promo visuals, photo-to-video and music videos while keeping an artist’s visual identity consistent; it is not a substitute for the photographer shot portrait and live shot your kit needs. Catalog management, including importing your existing releases from public music catalogs, is designed to hold your release list in one place rather than you reassembling it from memory each cycle. And multi-artist workspaces with role-based permissions matter if a manager or label is maintaining kits for more than one act. If you make your own visuals today, Canva alternatives for musicians compares the design tools.
The checklist
- One line placing the act: name, base, sound, what is out now
- Focus track playing in one click, rest of the catalog linked
- Two or three usable photos, full resolution, photographer credited
- Short bio and long bio, third person, facts first
- One live video, full song, honest audio
- Notable past shows and any upcoming dates
- Press links if genuine, section removed if not
- Contact at the top and the bottom, with who handles what
- Current release block that you swap each cycle
- One link that never changes
That is the whole thing. An EPK that does those ten jobs beats a beautiful one that buries the contact address.
