CHAPTER 8

Music Marketing: How to Make an EPK (Electronic Promo Kit)

An EPK Is Your First Impression

First impressions are important in business. A solid and concise Electronic Promo Kit (EPK) helps you to make the right first impression. Prospective partners and A&Rs want to see what you show your intended audience, but they have different interests than fans, and will be looking for certain things at first glance. They will want to listen to a few tracks and learn more about your brand. They are typically very busy and won’t have much time, so it’s crucial you put your best foot forward. You should have your best work right up front, since they will assume anything you show them is the best you can do.

They need to be able to understand the most important points quickly and easily, so you should give them just enough to do that and not more. Your EPK should make it easy for them and should have no excess materials or fluff. For your first impression, your EPK is more than a calling card. It’s your ultimate marketing tour-de-force.

What’s in an EPK, and Who Is It for?

An EPK is your digital portfolio delivered over the Web and is designed mainly to promote a band or artist to others in the industry. As discussed in Chapter 7, we call these industry professionals intermediaries because they insert themselves into the artist development, marketing, or business development process. Some examples of intermediaries:

Additional types of intermediaries who will have interest in your EPK might include:

This is not an all-inclusive list, but it’s clear that just about anyone you will want to work with wants to see your EPK first. Their goal at outset is to get a very quick and clear understanding of your music and to see how you market yourself. They want to know where you are in your business development process, and what drives you.

In Chapter 7, I walked you through clarifying your target audience. Your EPK should make clear who that audience is and how you intend to reach them, and should clearly communicate how and why your music and persona resonate with your intended fan base. The goal is straightforward, but it’s not a simple task. A lot of thought and care goes into crafting an effective EPK, as it reflects on your professionalism, preparedness, talent, ability, and commitment. It’s worth your time and effort to make it as good as possible, since your music career could depend on it.

Begin your EPK creation process by thinking carefully about who will view it. If your goals are to get a major label record deal and a big-time manager, your EPK will look different than if your target is an indie label or a booking agent. As you design your EPK and work on the materials to include, think about who will see it, and what you want them to do.

Action Steps:

Take your time with this, because the answers will guide the foundation of your EPK and all of the pieces that follow.

Let’s see what is inside your EPK. The most basic version might contain the following:

Think of it as your musical resume which lives online. You want it to be easy to find and easy to navigate. I’ll describe each component in turn, mention some hosting options, and suggest how you can get it in front of the people you want to see it. This aligns with the I²M branding formula from the last chapter.

Recorded Music

Sound recordings that used to require long hours in a recording studio can now be accomplished in much less time using a laptop computer with quality peripherals and software. Whether in your bedroom or in a fully equipped recording studio, you should do whatever it takes to create excellent recordings, since it’s important for advancing your career. Listeners will assume it’s the best you can produce, so make sure that it really is your best work.

Quality recordings make your music more accessible and enjoyable to listen to. Listeners will notice and appreciate you care enough about your music to record it properly. Your recordings can live in your EPK as audio files or be hosted on another platform, such as SoundCloud. If you opt for the latter, embed the file in your EPK so the listener doesn’t need to leave the hosting site to listen.

Photos and Artwork

The same advice applies to your photos and artwork. Buy the best quality you can afford. It pays to hire professionals and, if you’re a student, you may be able to get a discount or even barter for these services. You could offer a photography or art student some music lessons in exchange for their work, which they could also use for their own portfolios. Promotional photos (a.k.a. promo pics) should be style-appropriate. The setting and attire might look quite different for an aspiring opera diva than a metal band. Choose your settings to create the right “vibe” or ambience for your brand. Artwork can be album art, website page designs, logos, or any graphics that represent your brand image.

If you are planning to use live performance shots, have the photographer include the audience and their reactions in their camera angles. Seeing enthusiastic audience members makes a stronger impression than seeing shots of just the performers on the stage without the audience in view. Your photographer will need full access to the stage during your performance to get shots that include the audience.

Action Steps:

Artist Bio

The bio is where you get to tell your backstory and explain to your prospective audience why they should be interested in you and your music. It doesn’t need to be very long, but it does need to be well written, without spelling, grammar, capitalization, punctuation, or other errors. Above all else, it should be interesting, and tell the reader what you want them to know about you and your music. Bios can be humorous, serious, tongue-in-cheek, and even fictitious, as long as it is clear you aren’t being deceptive.

The bio should not be too long; usually two to three paragraphs are sufficient. If you wish to do a long-form bio as well, you could include both versions. If your audience is international, you might want to offer versions in different languages.

Action Steps:

Write your artist bio. Or, retrieve the bio you used for your business plan. You might end up making changes to it for the EPK’s purposes, yet it will give a start.

Videos

Although not all EPKs use videos, I recommend using video if you have quality live video that shows your music in a positive light. If you have professionally produced concert or music videos, that’s always great to have in your EPK, as long as it shows you at your very best. If your videos are grainy, unfocused, poorly lighted, or otherwise not professionally produced, it’s probably better not to include them.

Tip: As with live performance photographs, always include the audience with your camera angles. The best performance videos show enthusiastic audience reactions. Make sure your videos have excellent audio as well.

Press Clippings, Quotes

If you don’t have any press articles or quotes from other influential people to put in your EPK, make it your mission to get some. Think like a publicist: Find writers and reviewers at local news outlets, and make friends with them. Interview some well-known musicians, talk to radio people—be resourceful and you can generate the buzz you need. It takes some effort and strategic thinking, but it’s worth it. Having positive comments from believable people and news articles about you gives you extra credibility, can help you attract an audience, and is evidence you are a musical force to be reckoned with.

Social Media Links

A&R departments at major labels aren’t only interested in obvious talent or good music. To offer a deal, prospective labels and intermediaries want to see that you’ve already cultivated loyal and dedicated fans. The best way to show strong potential is to have an audience already in place. Growing and maintaining a social media presence using frequent direct engagement with fans is very convincing when it’s done with authenticity and integrity. It should never be faked. Buying likes and follows is a bad idea, which experienced industry people will quickly see through, and they will write you off for it. Your following and interactions online must be verifiably real.

Free platforms you can use to build your following include Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, SoundCloud, TikTok, Reddit, and others. LinkedIn is extremely important because all the music industry people use it, so you should definitely have a credible and completely filled out profile on LinkedIn. Engaging actively with your fans on social media is a requirement for all aspiring artists and bands in today’s music industry.

Labels look for evidence of your fan base and want to see you are already earning money with your music. One award-winning A&R representative I know lists his requirements for consideration on his website, stating right up front that great talent and music isn’t enough to be eligible for submission. He asks that, in addition to great talent and image, artist bio, and proof of regular live shows, that candidates have 30,000 Spotify streams per month, 70,000 Twitter followers, and a YouTube video with half a million views. He requests that artists do not contact him until they can meet those requirements and can also prove they are already earning money from their music.

Your EPK is the place to show off all your online stats. Music business people pay close attention to data analytics. They will want to see that you have a strong social media presence, where your followers are located, and how often they engage with you online. For your online social presence, build it and they will come.

Crowdfunding

You may not be quite that far along with your following, or your goals may not be to sign with a major label, and that’s perfectly fine. Regardless, you should strive to show through your EPK that you have the ability to generate strong interest in your music as an independent artist or band. One oft-overlooked way to do that is through a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Besides the obvious goal of raising funds to record or tour, successful crowdfunding is powerful proof that you appeal to a real audience. More artists should consider crowdfunding as a “proof of concept” for their music business prospects. There are many types of crowdfunding models artists can use; KickStarter, Indiegogo, and Patreon are some popular choices. I recommend investigating this further and showing the results in your EPK, if you are successful with it.

Where Should Your EPK Live?

The EPK can be a standalone file, like a zip file. The advantage of this is that you can send it as an enclosure, and the recipient won’t need to be connected to the internet to view and listen after they’ve downloaded it. Many artists and bands will make their EPK available online to anyone who wants to check it out, though this isn’t a requirement. If you do this, you can send the URL as a link via e-mail, text, or chat, and the EPK might also appear in search results from search engines like Google or Bing.

Some music aggregators like SonicBids or ReverbNation are created specifically to host your EPK; other places to host include your own website or a full service platform like Bandzoogle. An advantage of an aggregator is you can use it to integrate other business functions such as merchandising, ticketing, designing your website, blogging, and e-mail marketing campaigns. They can also streamline looking for gigs, integrate your calendar into your EPK, link to the venues you play, handle ticketing and payments, and help you license your recordings for use in visual media. They might also have an automated e-mail marketing function to stay in contact with fans en masse using a newsletter, for example. Most aggregator sites charge a monthly subscription fee.

Action Step:

Shop around to find the online platform for your EPK that most closely suits your needs and budget.

When MySpace was new in the 1990s, I wondered whether musicians needed a website of their own to promote their music. I still wonder the same thing. While some artists use websites, others choose to promote themselves on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Clubhouse, or TikTok. Other artists choose to use music streaming services such as Pandora or Spotify as their promotional home base. Music aggregators like Sonicbids, Bandzoogle, TuneCore, ReverbNation, and CD Baby all allow artists to quickly and easily upload and host their music and marketing materials.

With so many digital channels available to reach your audience, it’s easy to be confused or overwhelmed by choices. People are busy, and attention spans are short. When you approach a record label, a booking agent, or an entertainment lawyer, what do you want them to see? How will your audience find you? What is guaranteed to grab and keep their interest? What are the right choices? Don’t feel too overwhelmed; just inform yourself the best you can, and then choose whatever seems right.

A professional looking EPK allows you to quickly and clearly show your best work to others, while telling them why they should want to hear you and work with you. Since you only get one chance to make a first impression, it’s important to dedicate the utmost care and thoughtfulness to create your EPK as the ultimate ninja marketing tool for you and your music.