EPK for Musicians: Artist and Band Examples

An EPK for musicians is a single web page holding your music, a live video, two bios, print-resolution photos, press quotes, show dates and one contact. Bookers give it about thirty seconds, so the player and one performance clip belong in the first screen, and the bio goes underneath. Everything else is optional. The mistake that kills most artist press kits is treating them like a biography with music attached. A talent buyer is not reading your story. They are answering one question, which is whether you can fill a room on a Thursday.

The format has settled in the last few years. Zipped folders of WAVs and TIFFs are dead: nobody downloads a 40MB file from an unknown sender. A hosted page you can update, that plays on a phone, and that opens from a DM is now the working standard for artists, bands and DJs alike. If you want the full section-by-section breakdown with sample layouts, the electronic press kit examples page has the complete structure.

What should be in a musician's electronic press kit?

A musician's EPK should contain eight things: a short bio of 50 to 100 words, a long bio of 250 to 400 words, two or three high-resolution press photos, streamable music, at least one live performance video, press quotes with the outlet named, past and upcoming show dates, and a named contact. Anything beyond that is a downloads section, not part of the main page.

The horizontal photo requirement catches a lot of artists out. Venues and festivals build banners, header images and print listings, and every one of those is wider than it is tall. If your only press shot is a vertical portrait, someone has to crop your head off to use it, and more often they just use a different act's photo instead.

How do you make an EPK for music?

Write both bios first, then assemble the assets around them. The bios are the slowest part and everything else is a file you already have. Work in this order and an artist EPK takes an afternoon rather than a month of avoidance.

1. Write the short bio. Fifty to a hundred words, third person, present tense. Open with genre and city, then the single credit that carries the most weight: a support slot, a placement, a festival, a playlist add, a notable producer. Cut the origin story entirely. "Formed in a garage in 2019 after meeting at college" is the line that gets skimmed past in every EPK ever written.

2. Write the long bio. Two hundred and fifty to four hundred words. Here you can have the story, but structure it around the current release rather than chronology. A journalist writing a preview needs an angle for this record, not a timeline.

3. Pick three tracks, newest first. Not your whole discography. A booker listens to about forty seconds of the first track and either keeps going or closes the tab, so lead with the song that establishes what you sound like fastest.

4. Choose one live video. Full song, real audience, sound that is at least listenable. Phone footage from a good night beats a polished studio performance, because the thing being evidenced is that a room responds to you.

5. Add the numbers honestly. Monthly listeners, the cities they are in, follower counts and what you have drawn recently. Inflating a draw is the fastest way to never get rebooked, since the venue finds out on the night.

6. Put it on one link and keep it current. Update the show dates and listener figures whenever they move. A press kit showing last summer's tour in March reads as an act that has stopped working, which is the opposite of the impression you need.

What does a band EPK need that a solo artist EPK does not?

Three things. A group press shot at print resolution, because publications will not run individual headshots for a five-piece. A lineup with the instrument each member plays, since sound engineers and stage managers use it to plan input lists. And a technical rider or at least a stage plot, because a band asking a venue to guess at the backline is a band that gets booked second.

The average draw matters more for bands too. A solo artist can be booked as a support on the strength of the record alone. A five-piece costs the venue more in fees, hospitality and stage time, so the number of tickets you move is the figure the promoter runs the math on before saying yes. Put it in plain terms: the rooms, the cities, the dates and roughly what you pulled.

How do you send an EPK to a booking agent?

Put the URL in the body of the email in the first two lines, never as an attachment. Inbox previews cut off after roughly the first sentence, so open with genre, city and your strongest credit, then the link. Booking agents do not download files from strangers, and an attachment is the single most common reason a pitch is never opened at all.

Keep the email itself to about four lines. Who you are, what you sound like, what you are asking for, the link. Name the specific night or room you are pitching for if you know it, because a mass send with no venue named reads as exactly that. Then follow up once, after ten days, and let it go if there is no reply. Promoters book months ahead and silence is usually calendar, not rejection.

The same page does double duty for press and for brands, which is why keeping it live matters. When a release lands you will be pushing the announcement across socials, playlists and mailing lists at once, and it helps to turn one announcement into posts sized for every channel rather than rewriting it eight times while the news is still fresh.

How much does an EPK cost?

A do-it-yourself EPK typically runs $0 to $300 in the US. At the bottom of that range you are using a hosted page, photos you already own and copy you wrote yourself. At the top you are paying for a website subscription plus a commissioned or licensed photo shoot, which is usually the one line item worth spending on, since bad photos cost you coverage repeatedly.

Agency-built press kits start in the low thousands. For an act still building a draw that is money better spent on the record or on photography. The design of a press kit has almost no bearing on whether you get booked. The music, the live video and the draw number do all the work, and a plain page carrying those three beats a beautiful one that buries them.

Do you need an EPK to get gigs?

For local support slots, not always: a link to your streaming profile and a phone number often does it. For anything with a budget attached, effectively yes. Festivals, booking agencies, sync opportunities, brand partnerships and press all ask for the same bundle of assets, and an artist who sends one link instead of eight attachments over three emails simply looks easier to work with.

The EPK also compounds. Every time it is opened by someone who does not book you, they still now know what you sound like, and the second approach a year later starts from a different place. That is not true of an attachment nobody downloaded.

Turning an artist press kit into sponsorship money

Most musician EPKs stop at the booking use case and leave money on the table. Brands sponsor artists, tours, merch runs and residencies, and the thing a marketing manager needs is not your bio. It is audience size, where that audience lives, engagement, and a price they can approve without opening a negotiation.

That means adding two sections that a booking-only press kit skips: an audience block with monthly listeners, top cities and age split, and a rate card naming what a brand can buy. A tour-long logo placement, a set of social posts, a merch collaboration, a mailing list send. Put real numbers on each. The whole argument for how to price those placements is in the guide on how much to charge for sponsorship, and the wider picture of what artists actually get paid sits on the music sponsorships page.

If you would rather not maintain two documents, run one page that does both jobs. Music and the live video at the top for bookers, the audience numbers and rates at the bottom for brands. That is exactly how a Sponsorships profile is built: your audience figures and formats in a shareable link with a rate card a brand can book from directly, kept current as your numbers move. Membership is flat, commission is 0%, and the sponsor pays you directly. If you want the general-purpose version of the document rather than the music-specific one, start from the media kit examples and template.