Why Your Band REALLY Needs an EPK

Whether you’re a solo artist or an aspiring band, you’ll be approached with more musical opportunities if you take the time to create an electronic press kit (EPK). With an EPK, you’re ready to market yourself to anyone, whether it’s a booking agent for a local music venue, the program director at a radio station, a music journalist for your local newspaper, or anyone else. In other words, an EPK is your first step toward marketing your music — let’s look at how to put together an EPK for your band.

What Does an EPK Look Like in the 21st Century?

Back in the day, a press kit was a physical collection of photos and documents that a band (or their manager more likely) could stuff in an envelope and physically hand over or mail to a record-label exec or a radio-station manager. In the modern world, you have a lot more options than this. To keep it simple, we recommend focusing on three basic options. You should be able to:

Physically hand someone your EPKEmail or text someone a link to your EPKOffer easy access to your EPK if they find your band on Spotify, Bandcamp, ReverbNation, etc.

In the physical realm, USB thumb drives are cheaper than ever, and you can even get custom drives with your band logo on them for less than you might think. Load up your EPK assets on these drives, and you can hand them over to anyone instantly. In the virtual realm, setting up a website for your band that includes all your EPK assets makes it easy to email or text people about your band. You should also look at your options wherever your music can be found — many online music services like Bandcamp and ReverbNation have options to upload artwork, press releases, upcoming tour dates, and more. Explore your account settings to see how much info you can pack into your web presence — if someone stumbles across your band for the first time, then make it easy for them to find out more about you.

What Does an EPK Include?

Ask yourself these questions. If someone is looking at your band’s EPK without ever having met or spoken to you, then they should be able to:

Easily understand who you areKnow what your music sounds likeFind more of your musicKnow how to contact you

Consider it an opportunity to put your best foot forward — you can also choose to include video clips of your best performances, links to published reviews of your previous concerts or albums, or anything else that shows who you are and what you do.

Beware of information overload, though — you don’t want to provide an EPK with dozens of pages of information and dozens of audio and video clips. Include enough information and assets to get someone interested and give them a way to contact you without making them feel like they’ve been presented with an encyclopedia about your band.

Common Things to Include in Your Band’s EPK

Band/artist bio

Keep this short. Just a few sentences will sum up how you view and present your band — offer more than that, and it likely won’t be read. Keep in mind that many journalists prefer to use a band’s official bio instead of writing their own version of it, so providing a short and easy-to-read bio will increase the likelihood that someone will copy it and put it in print.

Album art/band logo

Just like with your artist bio, many music blogs, journalists, and publications will be happy to include your official logo or artwork, but only if they have it. Providing official artwork and logos makes it easy for them to help your press coverage stand out.

Pictures

As a band, it can be challenging to amass and curate a collection of quality photos of yourself. You don’t need to be a master photographer to take some fun photos in your rehearsal space, but, for an official band photo, it can be well worth the cost to have a professional photographer snap some shots of you and your band. Assuming you’re working on your social media presence, too (and you should be), use that to crowdsource photos from your followers. (This also enhances your engagement with them.) In other words, ask your followers to post photos they took at your last show and promise to highlight the top entries. Ask them if they mind if you use their photos to help promote your band, and they’ll likely be happy to allow it.

Videos

Video clips of your live performances show people what to expect when you hit the stage. If you don’t have any quality video of your band, then you can create your own promo video in your rehearsal space. You don’t even need to make a unique audio recording to go with the video — use your album recording or even a rough demo recording if that’s all you have. Just having your music playing over a short video that shows your band rehearsing serves the purpose.

Even a simple handheld video recorder can help your band make memorable videos — click here to shop handheld video recorders.

Music

Even if you haven’t recorded and released a full album, you should find a way to include an audio example of your band in your EPK. Even a rehearsal recording with your smartphone can suffice, but remember that these recordings may be the only thing a potential booking agent judges you by. If you’re new to recording your band, then it’s worth the time and effort to record your band rehearsals — check out this Sweetwater article to learn more about recording your band practice.

Adding an external microphone to your iPhone or iPad empowers you to capture high-quality audio with your portable devices — click here to shop microphones for your iPhone or iPad.

Where Should I Put My Band’s EPK?

As we’ve mentioned above, aim to make your EPK equally accessible in physical and digital formats. In the physical realm, handing over a USB thumb drive with your band’s EPK on it is the perfect way to wrap up a casual conversation with anyone that’s even remotely interested in your band. You can tell them to check out your website or social media, but, if you put physical media in their hand, they’re much more likely to follow up with you.

In the digital realm, having a simple, one-page band website puts you in full control over how you present your band, and DIY website design has never been easier or more accessible. Your webpage should have links to anything that relates to you — your YouTube channel, your Spotify playlist, your social media accounts, and so on. In addition to your own website, you should dig into any other platforms that your band uses to see how far you can customize your presentation — services like Bandcamp, ReverbNation, and Spotify each give options for uploading EPK assets like photos, short bios, logos, artwork, and so on. Basically, anywhere someone can find your music, you can use all the available options to customize and personalize their experience.

While having a website makes it easy to text a single link to anyone who may be interested in your band, consider making your EPK files available on a file-sharing service like Dropbox, as well. This can be more efficient and useful for blogs and music journalists when they hype your band — sending them a Dropbox link to clearly labeled folders like “Band Photos” and “Logos/Artwork” saves them time and energy, and they’ll appreciate how easy you made it for them. In short, when you want to make a great first impression, give them a physical USB drive or send them to your website. And, when someone is writing about you or otherwise doing marketing for you, send them a file-sharing link to folders with all the assets they need.

Don’t Delay on Your EPK

To many musicians, putting together an EPK can feel overwhelming at first, and it’s important to keep the end goal in mind — you want to make it easy to show someone who you are, what your music sounds like, and how to contact you. Your audio and video examples don’t need to be world-class productions, but they do need to convey that you’re passionate about what you do. If you have the passion but need some help with the technical side of creating demo recordings and videos, then give your Sweetwater Sales Engineer a call at (800) 222-4700 — we’re musicians, too, we’ve put together our own EPKs, and we’re happy to advise you!

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