How to Build an Artist EPK: What to Include (with Examples)

An electronic press kit (EPK) is the single link an artist sends when a promoter, festival, journalist or brand asks the question that could have paid the rent that month. Getting it right is less about design and more about making six specific pieces of information findable in under a minute.

This guide covers the six things every EPK needs, how to write the bio, the exact photo and video specs, and where to host it so the link works two years from now.

The six things every EPK must contain

Anything less and the promoter emails back for more, which halves your conversion. Anything more and the important pieces are buried. In order of what a booking party reads first:

1. Cover image and one-line pitch. A single strong photo above the fold and one sentence that says what the artist does and where they are from. "Neo-Sufi vocalist from Delhi with three albums and a residency at the Kamani Auditorium" beats "Passionate singer following her dreams".
2. Bio, in three lengths. 50, 150 and 300 words. Detail below.
3. Press photos, download-ready. Three to five, mix of live and studio, high resolution, no watermarks, credited to the photographer.
4. Performance videos. Two or three, embedded so they play in place. One live full-song, one live medley or reel, one interview or acoustic. Under three minutes each.
5. Track sample or set list. A SoundCloud embed, a Spotify link, or for a live act, a three-song set list showing range.
6. Past shows and press coverage. Five to eight recognisable line items — festival names, venue names, brand names. Two or three press logos or quote pulls.

Contact goes at the top and the bottom of the page. Manager name, direct email, direct phone or WhatsApp, and a booking form for enquiries that will not read the contact block.

How to write the bio

Most artist bios fail in one of two ways. Either they read like a fan letter — full of adjectives, no facts — or they read like a school essay, listing everything the artist has done in chronological order.

The working formula is: who you are, what you do, what proves it, what you are up to now. Written in the third person, active voice, no adjectives you cannot back with a specific.

The 50-word bio (festival programme)

Meera Chandran is a Carnatic and semi-classical vocalist based in Chennai. She trained under Sri T V Sankaranarayanan, has released two albums on Amoeba Records, and headlined the December Season at the Music Academy in 2024. She is currently on a nine-city tour of the UK and Europe.

The 150-word bio (EPK cover)

Expand the 50 with one paragraph on what the artist is known for musically — the technique, the crossover, the collaborations. Add one line on venue names the reader will recognise. Add one line on what is next: album release, tour, residency, brand partnership.

The 300-word bio (press release)

Add a career-arc paragraph — first album, breakthrough moment, defining collaboration — and one quote from a critic or established artist. Do not write it as a life story; a critic reading it should be able to pull two facts and one quote in 30 seconds.

Photo specs that get used

The single reason promoters keep asking artists for new photos is that the ones on the EPK are portrait crops that cannot be used on a landscape festival banner. Ship both.

• Portrait, 2000 × 3000 px minimum, JPEG or PNG, sRGB colour space. Head and shoulders and a wider shot.
• Landscape, 3000 × 2000 px minimum, same specs. Wide enough that a designer can add text on the right.
• Square, 2000 × 2000 px. For Instagram grid and profile posts.
• Live shot, 3000 × 2000 px, taken from the audience side, not backstage.
• Alternate colourway. At least one image not against a dark background, so it can be used on light backgrounds without inverting.

Every photo should have a filename that includes the artist name and the photographer credit: meera-chandran-portrait-01-pc-arjun-menon.jpg. That credit line has to appear in every publication that uses the image — making it findable saves the argument later.

Video specs that get used

The mistake most artists make is uploading a 4K 90-fps trailer that takes 20 seconds to start streaming and looks like a car commercial. Promoters need to hear the artist, not see production value.

• One live full-song, front-of-house camera, front-of-house sound. Not a music video, not a remix. Under 5 minutes.
• One live medley or highlight reel, 60 to 90 seconds, cut from three or four shows. Show scale — a crowd shot at the end is worth a paragraph in the bio.
• One interview, acoustic session or in-studio clip. Shows personality. Under three minutes.
• Hosted on YouTube or Vimeo, embedded on the EPK page. Not a direct MP4 — bandwidth kills the load.

Every video should have a poster frame that shows the artist's face, not a title card. Autoplay is off.

Past shows and press

Pick eight past shows that a stranger would recognise, or that make the point of scale. Festival names, headline venues, brand activations. Not every gig — the local coffee shop residency in year one does not need to be here.

For press, pick three to five outlets — Rolling Stone India, Mid-Day, Firstpost, Wire, TimeOut. One quote pull per outlet, with a link to the piece. If the artist has never been reviewed, use a testimonial from a fellow artist or a venue programmer with permission.

Where to host the EPK

Three real options. Pick one and commit — the worst outcome is an EPK on a personal Squarespace that goes down the week a festival programmer opens the link.

A stable custom URL

Best for artists with an agency or manager. The URL is the same every year, embeds update in place, analytics tell you which promoter opened it. This is what MyShowPage builds automatically at myshowpage.com/@handle/epk from the same event and media data the artist enters once.

A PDF one-pager as backup

Attach when someone asks for something to forward or print. Keep it two pages max — cover with photo and pitch on page 1, bio and contact on page 2. Link to the online EPK from inside the PDF.

A Google Drive folder or Dropbox link

Only works if the promoter is technical enough to know what to do with it. Most are not. Skip this unless the EPK is being sent to another artist's manager, not a promoter.

Update rhythm

An EPK is a living document, not a one-time build. The update cadence that keeps it credible:

• Every three months. Refresh past shows list. Bump the "currently on" line in the bio. Swap one photo.
• Every 12 months. New portrait photo shoot. New live video from the last tour. Rewrite the 50-word bio around what changed in the year.
• After any big win. Same day. A festival slot, a chart entry, a brand deal — update the EPK before the publicist sends the release. Journalists check.

The one-record approach

Everything in this guide — the bio, the photos, the videos, the past shows, the press — is one dataset shown in different ways for different audiences. Your public profile is the fan-facing view. Your EPK is the industry-facing view. Your one-pager PDF is the printable view. Enter the data once, publish it four ways.

That is exactly how MyShowPage's artist EPK is built — from the same events, media and bio data that runs the public profile.