The one-page press kit: Building an EPK that gets you booked, blogged, and playlisted

Somewhere right now, a promoter is deciding who opens a show in six weeks. She has 40 emails to get through before lunch. Yours is one of them. She will give it about 30 seconds — and in those 30 seconds she's not listening to your music. She's looking at your press kit, deciding whether you're worth the three minutes it takes to listen.

That's the whole game. An EPK — electronic press kit — is not a formality or a music-industry hazing ritual. It's the document that does your talking when you're not in the room, which is 99% of the time. And most indie artists either don't have one, or have one so bad it actively costs them shows.

This is how to build one that works, in an afternoon, for free or close to it.

Who actually opens your EPK (and what they look at first)

An EPK isn't for fans. It's for the four types of people who can put your music in front of fans, and each of them scans it differently:

• Promoters and talent buyers look at your live video and your draw first. Can you perform? Can you bring 20 people through the door? A shaky phone clip of you commanding a room beats a $3,000 music video every time.
• Journalists and bloggers look at your bio and your angle. They're hunting for a story — "DMV drill artist who used to be a church drummer" is a story; "versatile artist making waves" is a delete.
• Playlist curators go straight to the music links. They'll give your first song 20 seconds. Everything else in the kit exists to get them to press play with a good attitude.
• Festival buyers and booking agents look at history and numbers: where you've played, who you've opened for, whether your streams are trending up. They're assessing risk, not vibes.

One document has to serve all four. That's why the order of elements matters as much as the elements themselves.

The modern format: one page, one link

The EPK of 2010 was a zip file full of Word docs and 8MB photos. Send that today and it goes to spam — literally, attachments from strangers trip spam filters constantly.

The modern EPK is a single web page or a single clean PDF, sent as one link in the body of your email. That's it. Everything a curator needs, scannable top to bottom in under a minute, clickable where it counts.

A quick word on link-in-bio tools: your Linktree (still free, with paid tiers from $8/month) is not an EPK. It's a menu — a stack of links with no context, no bio, no photos, no story. It's fine for your Instagram bio. But a promoter clicking through six unlabeled links to figure out who you are will just… not. A real EPK page presents everything in order, in one scroll, with your best material at the top. Build both; send the EPK.

The bio: three lengths, zero clichés

You need your bio written at three lengths, because different people steal different amounts of it:

1. One-liner (under 20 words). For social bios, show listings, and the top of the EPK itself.
2. 100 words. What a blog pastes into a roundup or a venue pastes into an event page.
3. 300 words. The full story, for features and interviews. Nobody reads past 300. Nobody.

Write all three in third person so people can copy-paste without rewriting — that alone makes you 40% more likely to get covered, because you did the journalist's work for them.

Now the hard part: writing a bio that isn't wallpaper. The three words that kill more bios than anything else are passion, journey, and versatile. Here's what we mean, with examples we wrote for imaginary artists:

Before: "Born and raised in Baltimore, Kelz has had a passion for music since a young age. His versatile sound blends multiple genres and is sure to take listeners on a journey. He is currently working on new music."

Every sentence is true of every artist alive. Nothing is specific, so nothing is memorable, so nothing is quotable.

After: "Kelz spent four years engineering other rappers' sessions out of a West Baltimore rowhouse before recording a verse of his own. It shows: his tracks sound mixed by someone who's heard a thousand bad ones. His 2026 single 'Rent Week' turned a grocery receipt into a hook and a local anthem."

Same artist. But now there's a detail (rowhouse studio), a credential (engineer first), an angle (technician-turned-artist), and a song with a story. A journalist can build a feature from that paragraph.

One more, because the "before" disease has variants:

Before: "Aaliyah Reign is an up-and-coming R&B singer with a unique sound and undeniable talent, poised to take the industry by storm."

After: "Aaliyah Reign learned harmony singing behind her aunts in a storefront church in Norfolk, then spent two years covering 90s R&B on TikTok before she trusted her own pen. Her debut EP was cut live in one weekend — no tuning, three mics, a story about a breakup she waited a year to write down."

The formula, if you want one: a concrete origin, a specific sound description (name real reference points and textures, not "unique"), one accomplishment with a number or a name attached, and what's next. If a sentence could appear in another artist's bio unchanged, cut it.

Photos: what "usable" actually means

Press photos have one job: to be published by someone else. That means:

• High resolution — 300 DPI, at least 3000px on the long edge. Blogs need print-quality; Instagram screenshots are not press photos.
• Both orientations. Landscape for blog headers and event banners, portrait for posters and phone screens. Shoot both in the same session.
• No club-flyer treatment. No lens flares, no airbrush-graffiti text, no heavy filters, no promo graphics baked in. Publications add their own crops and text — give them a clean image.
• Your face, visible, in decent light. Moody is fine. Unidentifiable is not.

You do not need a $500 shoot. A friend with any modern phone, shot in the last hour before sunset against a simple background — a brick wall, a stairwell, a laundromat — beats a studio shoot with bad direction. Take 200 frames, pick 4: one landscape, one portrait, one close, one full-body. Label the files with your artist name, not IMG_4482.jpg.

Music: three songs, not thirty

The single most common EPK mistake is linking your entire catalog. Curators are not going to browse. Pick your two or three strongest, most representative songs — lead with the one you'd play a stranger in a car — and embed or link them directly. Not a profile link. The songs.

Unreleased material has a home here too: a private SoundCloud link is the industry-standard way to share it. Set the track to private, share the secret link, and keep downloads off. Curators know this workflow and having an unreleased record ready is a plus — press runs on things that haven't come out yet.

Video: two clips, two jobs

Two videos, clearly labeled:

1. One live clip. Even a single phone-shot song from a real show, with audible crowd. This is the promoter's entire risk assessment in 90 seconds.
2. One music video (or high-quality visualizer). This is the "do they have taste and a visual identity" check for editors and playlist brands.

If you have neither, a well-shot live performance video in your own space — think stripped, one-take, good audio — covers both jobs until you do.

Stats: the numbers that matter (and when to say nothing)

Here's the thing about numbers in an EPK: they're optional, and weak numbers hurt more than no numbers.

The stats industry people actually respect:

• Spotify monthly listeners (not total streams — monthly listeners show a living audience)
• Engagement rate — a 5,000-follower account averaging 400 likes and real comments beats a 60,000-follower account averaging 90. Everyone doing the booking knows followers can be bought; engagement is much harder to fake.
• Growth and geography — "monthly listeners up 3x since March" or "top cities: DC, Baltimore, Atlanta" tells a buyer where you can actually draw.
• Real-world proof — tickets sold, venues played, competition results.

When to include numbers at all: when they're trending up or genuinely notable for your stage. If you have 300 monthly listeners, skip the stats section entirely and let the music and the live clip carry it. Nobody penalizes a missing section; everybody notices a sad one.

Press quotes: how to get your first three

A press section with two real quotes changes how everything above it reads — it's proof that someone with no stake in you said you were good. Getting your first ones is a process, not luck:

1. Target local and scene-level outlets — city blogs, college radio, subgenre YouTube channels and newsletters. They exist to cover artists at your level, and one writer covering your scene is worth more than a mass email to Pitchfork.
2. Pitch like a person. Short email, their name, one line proving you read their stuff ("you covered [local artist] in March — this sits in that lane"), one link, one angle. That's the whole pitch.
3. Give them a reason it's news. A release date, a show, a milestone. This is where competition results earn their keep: "unsigned artist out of Norfolk just ran a three-week streak on SongBattle's leaderboard against a few hundred entries" is a hook a local blog can use — and if you get a Booth feature or a strong finish here, that's a quotable, linkable third-party credential. Put it in the kit.
4. Quote precisely. Name the outlet, use their exact words, link the piece. Never paraphrase a compliment into existence.

Contact info: the section people somehow ruin

At the bottom, always visible: name (yours or your manager's), email, phone number, city, and socials.

Two mistakes to avoid. First, info@ and bookings@ addresses with no human name attached read as either a big operation (you're not fooling anyone) or a black hole. firstname@yourartistname.com or even a clean Gmail with your artist name is warmer and gets replies. Second — and this one loses real money — no phone number. Promoters filling a canceled slot 48 hours out do not send emails and wait. They call whoever picks up.

The fatal errors

Any one of these can end the 30-second review:

• Autoplay music. The curator is at work, possibly reviewing you in an open office. Startle them and they close the tab on reflex.
• Broken links. Test every link on your phone, on mobile data, before you ever send the kit. One dead SoundCloud link reads as "doesn't sweat details," which is exactly what a promoter is screening for.
• Ancient photos. If your press shot is from 2019 — different hair, different weight, different era — the person booking you feels mildly catfished before you've played a note.
• "For fans of Drake." Comparing yourself to top-five-alive artists tells curators nothing except that you don't know your own lane. Compare laterally: name the mid-size and scene-level artists whose actual audience overlaps yours.
• Walls of text, PDFs over 10MB, zip files. Scannable or nothing.

Update it quarterly

An EPK is a living document. Put a repeating reminder on your calendar — every three months, 30 minutes: refresh the stats, swap in the newest release, add any new quotes or shows, delete anything stale, re-test every link. A kit with a show from last month on it signals momentum. A kit whose newest item is 14 months old signals the opposite, no matter how good the music is.

The tools (free and cheap, verified mid-2026)

• Canva — free tier is genuinely usable for a one-page PDF or simple EPK website; Pro (around $15/month, less billed annually) adds the background remover and brand kits. Search its template library for "press kit."
• Notion — free for individuals, and any page can be published to the web with one click. A Notion EPK page with embedded Spotify and YouTube is fast, clean, and free; a custom domain runs about $8–10/month extra if you want it.
• Bandzoogle — the musician-specific website builder, with EPK page templates built in. Plans run $10–$19.95/month (cheaper annually) with a 30-day free trial, and it bundles your whole site, store, and mailing list.
• A plain PDF — still completely acceptable. One page, under 5MB, links live and tested.

The tool matters far less than the discipline. One page, best material first, everything clickable, nothing stale.

Start with the mini-EPK you already have

Here's the part most artists miss: if you're competing on SongBattle, your profile is already a mini-EPK — and curators, bloggers, and other artists' fans are already clicking through to it from the leaderboard. Bio field, photo, song selection, links: every principle in this guide applies at small scale. A one-liner instead of "artist 🔥," a clean photo instead of a flyer crop, your best song leading. Treat every field like a curator will read it, because on a good leaderboard week, one will. Enter this month's battle and make the profile worth the click.

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Companion resources

Everything in this article turns into action faster with the matching template:

• Electronic Press Kit (EPK) Template — A copyable one-page EPK layout you can fill in and export as a PDF the same afternoon.
• Artist Bio Template (Short, Medium, Long) — Because every EPK needs a bio — three lengths, ready to fill.

Browse the full Resources library →