Saturday
Feb062010
February 6, 2010 Need An Electronic Press Kit? Make Your Own!
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in the middle of planning a tour for the Jason Parker Quartet. We’re going out in May and I’m busy contacting venues up and down the West Coast, from Vancouver BC to San Diego. I realized early on in the process that I needed an EPK, or Eletronic Press Kit.What Is An EPK?
And EPK is just as it sounds - and electronic version of the old press kit. Bands used to send out physical press kits that included demo CD’s/DVD’s, information about the band, photos, reviews and other marketing materials. Nowadays, however, most bookers prefer an electronic version so they can just click a few links, listen to a few mp3’s and make a decision. This is easier for them, and also easier for us.
It used to be that we’d have to pay for design, printing, CD’s, photos, etc. And some people still pay others to make their EPK’s for them. Both SonicBids and ReverbNation will make up a snazzy EPK for you, for a fee. But try as I might I just couldn’t see why I should pay someone a monthly fee to design and host my EPK when I could do it myself.
DIY EPK
I have never designed one before, so it took a little research. I checked out what those companies had to offer, looked at the EPK’s of a bunch of successful bands, and made notes on what information I needed how I could effectively get it all together. Luckily, with just a little knowledge of widgets and html I was able to design a pretty spiffy one! I actually used ReverbNation widgets for both the press quotes and videos. These are both free if you have an account with them (and you should). I also used the free Bandcamp album widgets to embed all my CD’s on the site (NOTE: If you don’t know about Bandcamp go there now and sign up! It’s the best site I’ve found to sell my music and I highly recommend them). After that it was just a matter of writing the text and formatting it to look pretty. All told I probably spent 4 hours putting it all together, and now I have an EPK that I can use for years to come. Total cost: $0.00!
My Results
You can check out the results here. Please let me know what you think! I welcome any and all comments and suggestions about the look, the functionality, anything I may have forgotten, etc.
If you need any help designing your own EPK please send me and email. I’d be happy to lend any guidance or assistance I can.
Reader Comments (8)
Jason,
I really like your EPK. Very fresh and simple. One question for you though, are you able to track which venues are actually looking at your EPK and whether they are listening to any of the tracks. In my experience it is important to know exactly where you are getting traction from. No point chasing 10 venues if only 3 have ACTUALLY checked out your EPK. Its so much easier to secure a venue when you know beforehand how receptive they will be
John
You're awesome! I am so annoyed by what the fee based companies have done to an already corrupt industry-paying to submit to a venue? It's just another way to take money from musicians who are desperate to be heard.
Thank you for this suggestion-it's brilliant. My only question-how do you email it to people so it looks like and EPK and not just an email with a link? that is one of the cool features of Sonicbids....just curious if you figured that end out.
Cheers,
MG
So, basically and EPK is just a webpage with all the content that is in the printed press kit? So should I just have a page on my website with all that stuuf and drop the link in an email? Or should it be a different site with downloadable photos, etc.
I'm a little confused.
TOm
Tom, essentially yes, at it's most simple it can be a single webpage. In fact I would say it's a better idea, as by putting the content on one page search engines will find the content more attractive, although that isn't the primary reason for it.
Try and think of it from the point of view of a someone who knows nothing about you, and may not even be very internet savvy. Try and lay the page out in a way that presents the info in the most simple yet intuitive way.
The EPK presented here is nice. The only thing I may add are anchor links to the various sections of the EPK, using the headers as a guide. So at the top of the page there would be 'read' 'watch' 'listen' 'contact' 'meet the band' etc. This just makes it easier for someone glancing at the page to know what is actually on it.
It may sound like overkill but you'd be surprised how lazy people can be!
Oh, another trick is to make the page and get some friends to visit it in front of you, and pay attention to what they look at first and click on.
Hope this helps.
Hey Jason, your EPK looks great! I was just wondering what program you used to create it...I know you said you used HTML and widgets from those other sites but what did you asseble it in? Sorry I'm new to the EPK stuff!!!
Thanks,
b
Nice design there. I wanna have one too. I'll try it this weekend!
Hello my name is Tiah Tolliver i was on a show and now that im off im trying to get my songs on the radio, and its hard to get people to turn there heads without and EPK. They love my songs but how can i get them heard. I started to look up EPK's and they are really pricy. I was wondering if you could give me more tips on how to get the ball rolling.
Coming from someone so frustrated with all the Sonicbids craziness in the past year and who has been thinking about paying RN, I am so ready to dump my subscription, roll up my sleeves and do this myself.
I think I bandcamp widget the best! Efficient and to the point!
Searching for Wordpress themes now that I can use to suit me.
When done I'll repost it here.
Thanks and see you around the jazz circuit hopefully soon!
~Michelle