Supporting Commentary:
At the beginning of this project, I had little clues to what an Electronic Press Kit actually was, however through research and discussions within seminars and with my peers, I have made an Electronic Press Kit of my own, a vital skill I am eager to develop and improve as I continue into the music industry. Whilst noticing the many aspects of an Electronic Press Kit, I realised one of the most integral parts was the artist biography.
When writing my artist bio, I first started with the strategies proposed by Vanessa Maria (2021) from Pirate Studios, which encouraged one to simply write out everything about you, from where you are based now and where you started; your chosen genre and style; who your influences and inspirations are; any current releases or projects that you are working on; and most importantly, some key achievements, something to show the public what you have done. As a First Year Conservatoire student, I am still honing my skills and defining the artist I want to be, therefore in my artist bio I have kept my statements rather simple. In the future, I would like to have a more prominent idea of what I want to achieve, perhaps naming specific eras such as Baroque or Romantic, or even composers I enjoy playing so that the classical world understand my style a bit more. Currently, I am also lacking in my achievements, giving me little to write about, however I thoroughly enjoy travelling and performance so have focused on my time with the Ashford Youth Jazz Orchestra (AYJO) to exemplify this. As part of my research, I found other artist profiles and websites to see how they structured their own artist bios and how they organised their websites. Noticing a difference in written styles and bio lengths between the classical world and modern pop artists, I tried to find more classical examples. Looking at musician’s websites such as Ingrid Jensen, Rob Burton, Daniel Barenboim, and many more, I realised there were many different ways I could present myself.
Using Aaron Akugbo’s website as an example (a Nigerian Scottish classical trumpet player), he starts with a medium length artist bio around 300 words on his home page, which then extends to around 530 words when you enter the biography section of his website. I enjoyed how within the first short paragraph, it describes Akugbo’s character, which creates a human connection, before continuing on to his training and achievements (Maestro Arts, n.d.). However, other examples – such as the websites of Ingrid Jenson and Rob Burton – show that it is also common practice to delve straight into one’s accomplishments, as after all, your bio is often used for self-promotion and to show your credentials. Therefore, within my own artist bio, I decided to begin with my location and that I am “excited to engage with new audiences and establish her name in the classical world.” In my opinion, this introduction helps to establish an immediate connection with my reader as they can see where I am aiming to go. Although I preferred artist bios that continue to elaborate on themselves before showing their training, I realised as I am only writing a relatively short bio in comparison to other classical musicians, I wanted to include my training within the first paragraph. In the future, when I have the ability to further expand on my profile and my achievements, I would like to show more of my personality within the first paragraph that could then be supported by my training and achievements afterwards.
Adding on to the multitudes I would change about my Electronic Press Kit in the future when I have kickstarted my career, is that I would hopefully be able to include some testimonies and reviews. I think these are a vital part of promoting your own brand as they aren’t your own words that you are feeding to your audience, often people like an opinion form a 3rd party before they can fully commit to trusting and supporting your brand.
When choosing what photos I wished to add to my Electronic Press Kit, I realise that I do not have many professional photos of myself, this is something that I would amend as I continue into my career, as photos are a great way to express yourself within your craft and provide media for press to use. I organised a gallery into different sections of my musical life as I thought it would make it easier if people were looking for photos from specific events or projects.
In today’s society, social media plays a huge part in the human lives. According to The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (2024), as of April 2024 the UK had 35 million Instagram users with the majority of these users aged between 25 and 34. With this popularity, many artists use this platform to promote themselves and their work. Instagram is great tool to reach and network as an artist, Pamika Horsaengchai from Sapiens Growth Marketing (quoted by Kuligowski, 2025) said “Instagram is more than a tool for promotion; it’s for building a community,” which nicely summarises how musicians, and any other business, can grow their audiences and fan bases, when using the platform strategically, thus creating new markets for themselves and opening up other sources of revenue. Following this logic, I included a button within my Electronic Press Kit that directs people to my professional Instagram page as well as a QR code that can be scanned. Currently, my Instagram is quite sparse, but as I continue on in my career, I plan to post more consistently in order to bring in more followers and widen my community. I may set myself goals such as posting once a month which can then be increased to once a week to help me achieve this connection with Instagram users. According to Jeremy Pregent’s (2025) online article, there has been a dramatic increase of short form music content with 68% of social media users discovering new music through this. Particularly focusing on how Instagram saw a 35% increase in music related content engagement than the previous year, I would work towards promoting my own music via this short form video content as a way to outreach to new audiences. Furthermore, 65% of concert goers expressed interest in virtual concerts, an idea that sky-rocketed throughout the global Covid-19 Pandemic. Thus, supporting the importance of social media as being part of a business plan as this provides a much wider outreach than supporters from near your location.
Providing contact information is vital in making sure viewers of your EPK, whether a supporter or a professional enquiry, have a way to reach you. I opted for creating a professional email to be used strictly for my music business in order to stay organised. When creating an actual website, I would like to add a form at the end of my page where people can submit their emails and email myself directly from the webpage. I believe making this as easy as possible for the viewer will increase chances of enquiries about my business and availability.
When it comes to finalising ideas for my Electronic Press Kit, reviews from my peers have been undeniably helpful. For example, we discussed the idea of a ‘Hero Image’ in one of our seminars, this being the initial and biggest photo that viewers will see. Despite not having any professionally taken photographs, my peers helped me to choose one that was deemed appropriate to fit the importance of this brief. I went with a photo of myself in my concert blacks – typical for classical musicians – holding my trumpet with a subtle smile. We thought this helped me come across as professional but still personable and easy to work with. At the beginning of the project, I really struggled with writing an artist bio as it felt weird to write about myself even in 3rd person. However, within our seminars and groups we went through some exercises to help combat this. For example, we would analyse Electronic Press Kits and bios other people had written – distancing myself from the bio helped me realise what contributed to a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ bio. We then tried writing a short bio for a made-up person using facts we were given, this helped me learn how to structure my words and what I felt was important to include within an artist bio. This made me more confident in my own writing skills and feel more at ease about presenting myself in a professional way. I started with the exercise of using 3 words to describe myself, as suggested within the seminars, and then listed everything I could think of to mention. Forming paragraphs after making this list felt much easier than when I first attempted this project. Within these group sessions, we also thought about the information we need to create an EPK. This included thinking about who are audience was – is it different depending on what field you are in? – and learning what the standard format is for your specialty. We also reflected on what point in your career do you need a website. With social media becoming ever more popular, is a website even necessary as a lot of the time musicians are contacted via their social media platforms for potential jobs and connections. I decided as a classical musician, it was important for me to have a website and an EPK as this sector tends to have an older demographic, although as a young musician I do want to continue building my social media platform to reach a further audience.
In conclusion, I think my final version of an Electronic Press Kit displays all the essential properties needed to promote yourself within the music industry. However I realise that there are many things that need to be added or developed as my career continues so that I can successfully present myself as the musician I would like to be. For example, being able to include reviews and testimonials would elevate my Electronic Press Kit. I would also like to develop this into a full website, with a specific section for photos so that I can share more about my craft whilst still including the Electronic Press Kit on the same site.
Bibliography
Kuligowski, K. (2025) 12 reasons to use Instagram for your business. https://www.business.com/articles/10-reasons-to-use-instagram-for-business/# [Accessed 20 May 2025]
Maestro Arts (n.d.) Aaron Akugbo trumpet. https://www.aaronakugbotrumpet.com [Accessed 3 May 2025].
Maria, V. (2021) How to write a music artist bio. https://pirate.com/en/blog/industry-tips/how-to-write-an-artist-bio/[Accessed 12 May 2025]
Pregent, J. (2025) The influence of music on social media: trends and consumer impact. https://lbbonline.com/news/the-influence-of-music-on-social-media-trends-and-consumer-impact [Accessed 20 May 2025]
