EPK Supporting Commentary 

My purpose and reasoning for creating an Electronic Press Kit is in order to have a means to sell myself that is more professional and informative of all my experiences and ambitions than just a social media account. As an artist, having a strong social media presence is obviously extremely useful for gaining followers, reaching a large amount of people at once and gaining the attention of potential employers. However, an EPK can be more effective at securing higher profile gigs with potentially higher pay, especially further along in my career, it provides a quick overview of my strengths, my notable moments and my unique selling points to industry professionals. It is a good resource to build upon as your career progresses and you gain more experience, it may not get me my next gig, or the one after that, but the one after that they might ask for my EPK and I’ll be sorted. Of course, ultimately in relation to a potential fan finding out about an artist, nothing beats just listening to their music and social media instantly caters to their shortened attention span. But in relation to a potential employer finding out about an artist, an EPK instantly caters to their desire to know how legitimate Joe Manson really is. 

The structure of my EPK I think is effective because the first thing you properly read, other than my name, is a quote of my old TikTok bio: “not Ed Sheeran, not King Krule, but I hope you think my music’s cool”. I wanted to add this in because it feels like the start of my journey, especially alongside the old polaroid of me when I was sixteen. It’s also a unique way to start an EPK and that should hopefully grab someone’s attention and stick in someone’s mind. I used to get jokes about people saying I’m like Ed Sheeran or King Krule because of my ginger hair, and inevitably my ginger hair is part of my image and so I thought I’d include the quote. Next is my short bio, highlighting my experience in different genres, my lyrical subject matters, my skills as a musician and my greatest strengths as a songwriter. My testimonials come next because the word of another person often legitimizes what you’re saying to the reader, and it breaks up the big blocks of text. Then I thought the reader should hear my latest release ‘Strings’ so that they immediately get an idea of what it is I do and then they can read the rest whilst listening to my track. Then I provided an overview of the musical elements I think shine the most in ‘Strings’, I explained the lyrics and mentioned my hopes to release lots more music in the summer and eventually an album in the future. The notable gigs section is after the ‘Strings’ section because I think right now my ability to record is stronger than my ability to perform. In this section I talk about all my previous performance experiences, my gigging and busking ambitions and how I want to get more confident on stage. And finally, the photo gallery and contact details are last because they are usually the last thing people care about. 

In terms of what areas I would like to improve upon and experience I would like to gain for my EPK in the future; I want more proper gigging experiences, higher quality more stylized photos of myself, better quality videos of gigs and perhaps a music video or some kind of visual to go alongside a release that I can show off. I want my aesthetic to be based around film style photography (not necessarily actual film, just a filmic look) and my collages that I make. I want my style of promotion to be quite handmade and artistic; I’ve already started this with my promotional visual for the release of my first single ‘Out of Frame’. I created a stop motion collage of birds flying past a window frame, I would like to come up with a similar visual snippet for my next single. It doesn’t have to be massively complex, I think that as long as an idea is captivating enough, it doesn’t matter how homemade it looks and the power of that visual can still be conveyed, it gives something for the listener to latch onto in this world of constant stimulation. Personally, I find it quite endearing when an artist makes their own cover art and every aspect of a release is the pure expression of one individual; that is authenticity.   

I don’t think I have a specific audience or age demographic that I am purposefully marketing towards. I suppose young people who feel disillusioned with technology and social media could be my target audience, but to be honest I think that all music is for everyone, I’m not trying to cater myself towards any one group. Nowadays, the standard practice in my field of songwriters is playing original songs in front of a camera for social media platforms with the lyrics appearing on the screen. I have done this a fair amount, and it is a good way of getting your songs out there, despite the fact that most people won’t watch the song in its entirety. However, I think that those who try something different and subvert expectations see more success and exposure on social media platforms. One way to do this that I have seen online is to have a camera fixed on a tripod, record yourself playing multiple parts and layer the videos on top of each other. This is a style of content creation I would like to emulate in the future at some point. In terms of the cost of assets, photography, domain name, potential copyright problems, I’ve had no issues. All the photos have been taken by friends for free, I used a free EPK builder website, and the name Joe Manson hasn’t been taken on any of social media platforms I use. 

The ideas for my electronic press kit were developed through group discussions with my friends and flat mates. We discussed what each other’s strengths are and what things we could improve upon or do more of. One thing that multiple people said about me was my unique lyrical content and subject matter, and so I mentioned that multiple times in my electronic press kit and this is also evident in my testimonials. Another thing that people said was a strength of mine was my range of experiences in different musical genres and how that has influenced my songwriting, and so I included that as well. In a discussion with my one-to-one tutor, whilst listening to my song ‘Strings’, he said that the introduction of the trombone in the chorus was a very interesting and captivating sound and that I should consider making that one of my unique selling points and including the instrument in more of my tracks. So, in light of this, I decided to make a point of this in my electronic press kit by describing the recording of the trombone and the intended effect of adding it as being an eerie synth sound. The commercial application of this electronic press kit is for potential employers and other musicians that might want to collaborate with me, they can find out everything they need to know about who Joe Manson is as an artist. I think that doing this has had a positive impact on my professional development because it has made me think about what kind of artist I would like to be and what I need to improve upon. I need to gain more gigging experience, more professional looking pictures and visuals to go alongside my music whilst keeping a consistent aesthetic.