View website here: https://amjmullen.wixsite.com/arianna-mullen-1
I have created an EPK for myself as an artist through the form of a website, with the aim that event’s organisers and venue owners will be able to see what kind of music I make, and atmosphere my live performances create to hopefully be booked for gigs. Using WIX, I created a website that includes a homepage and three tabs accessible by a menu bar at the top of the webpage. Videos, testimonials, and a contact page are all included as well as my artist bio and a mailing list on the home page.
I wanted to make my artist bio the forefront of the website as this gives a quick overview of the type of musician I am, and the services I could offer to an event space. After talking to my peers during the development stage of the website, I decided to make my artist bio longer, and give this its own ‘section’ with a separate background on my homepage as this was more aesthetically pleasing and allows viewers to quickly find what service I provide, type of music I make, and my music’s target audiences. Initially, my artist bio said ‘singer/songwriter from Sheffield’, but after receiving feedback I removed this as it could come across as confusing, now that I am based in Leeds, and most of my target audience will be Leeds venues.
The top of my home page features my artist name repeated across the screen. This not only looks professional but is a marketing strategy inspired by the marketing rule of 7 which is principle that suggests ‘a potential customer must see a message at least 7 times before…tak[ing] action’ (Illumination Marketing, 2025). In my case, the ‘customer’ can refer to a potential listener and the ‘action’ could be the customer downloading my music on streaming platforms, or a potential ticket sale. The repetition of ‘Arianna Mullen’ also creates familiarity within the public domain.
I’ve included professional portrait photos for the background and feature photos within the website. I have a selection of professional photos I could have included but chose to keep the ones for the website to a minimal and use images from the same shoot to keep the colour scheme and aesthetics similar throughout the whole website. When doing my market research, I was inspired by Becca Bartlett’s EPK (nd), that features a photo of her on a lilac background as the forefront of the website. This lilac theme is then continued throughout, as all the linked buttons are this colour. I took inspiration from this, so my colour scheme is inspired by the main image on my homepage. This includes burgundy reds, greys and white. While I think the photos I have included look professional, some photos of me on stage performing would be useful, as the images I currently have aren’t necessarily linked to my music or artist persona. I have also changed my Instagram, SoundCloud, Spotify, and YouTube profile pictures to match the images on my website to remain consistent across all platforms.
Creating content for my EPK included putting together a showreel of original songs and performances to showcase to event promoters and venue owners. I have been working on this since moving to Leeds in September and regularly attend open mics to capture enough content. I uploaded this to YouTube under ‘Arianna Mullen’ and linked this on the homepage of my website. This is also a useful thing to have as I can just send the link to the YouTube video directly to venue owners as well as my EPK. I set this video to play automatically as you scroll over it on the website homepage.
Similarly, to the right of this, I have linked my song ‘Flowers’ through a Spotify widget which you can play a one-minute preview clip of directly from my website and save quickly using the ‘add’ button instead of opening a third-party app. This will hopefully improve my Spotify numbers as this is accessible and easy to do. An artist who also has this feature on her EPK is Gracie Abrams (2025) under a ‘Top Tracks’ section, allowing viewers to easily access her music from her EPK site. Abrams’ EPK has links to ten of her songs but as I only have one single currently released on major streaming platforms, I have uploaded my unreleased demos to my SoundCloud account and included this in my website underneath the Spotify widget. This is mainly to give viewers a sense of the original music I write, as my debut single ‘Flowers’ was released over two years ago, and my sound and songwriting process has evolved since then. In the past I have sent my TikTok’s and Instagram reels to promoters, so this is definitely an upgrade. However, if I had more time, I would re-record five of the demos uploaded to my SoundCloud as these are just voice memos. I would like to record these properly in the studio, even if they are just guitar and vocals. I believe this would sound more professional and subsequently my target audience would take me more seriously as an artist if these sounded better – potentially making them more likely to book me for a gig, and even possibly pay me more. In the future, once I’ve distributed more music on streaming platforms, I’m hoping the SoundCloud widget on my website won’t be needed anymore as my discography will be large enough to not need these demos anymore. Similarly, I would like a more professional looking promo-video as the one I have made were just recorded by my friends on their phones. This could be done on a budget if I contact some film/photography students who need to expand their portfolio.
My website also features an ‘upcoming shows’ section where I have included my upcoming gig at Hyde Park Book Club on the 15th June. WIX allows you to sell tickets directly through your website, but as this gig is through an events company they had already created ticket sales through Eventbrite which I couldn’t link from my website. In the future if I am to put on my own gig, I would use the in-website ticket sales so that audiences can buy directly through my website, making the purchasing process easier. This ease could potentially mean more ticket sales, as people are less likely to do something if it includes a complicated process/multiple websites. I would also include an incentive such as the first ten tickets being cheaper than the rest. Proposing an ‘early bird’ ticket type would hopefully increase ticket sales and encourage people to buy their ticket there and then to avoid an increase in ticket price.
I have created a mailing list form for enthused listeners of my music to sign up to and receive updates about my music and upcoming gigs from. This is with the intention of creating a community and keeping my repeat listeners engaged by forming a relationship with these fans. Ultimately, with the hopes they will buy tickets to my gigs. I receive email updates when someone signs up to this and I can also view this from the WIX app. When it comes to sending out emails to my mailing list, I will use WIXs templates for mailing news to look as professional as possible.
Similarly, a form on the ‘contact’ section of my website allows people to send an email directly to me from the website, without having to open their mail application or type in my email address.
Further improvements I would make include buying a domain name to make my site easily accessible. With a monthly subscription to WIX, you can use a domain name for free for a year. Using the free version now means there are WIX adds on my site, subscribing would mean this WIX branding would be taken away, again adding to the professionality. Another advantage of buying a monthly subscription to WIX means I would get more storage to upload my videos and pictures to the website. I struggled to add all of the content I wanted on the ‘projects’ tab of my website. This was due to only having 500mb of storage with the free version of WIX. This is why some of these videos aren’t cropped and include a long interlude at the start of them; I hadn’t cropped them before uploading, unaware of the storage limitations. This would be the first thing I would change if I bought a WIX subscription. A standard WIX subscription package includes 2GB of storage and costs £9 a month, this may be something I will invest in in the future.
In The Arctic Monkey’s EPK (nd), they have included a ‘news’ section that links to articles written about the band and tour announcements. I like this feature and would take inspiration if I was a bigger artist.
After discussing my EPK with my peers, I decided to take on feedback that the website should be in third person. Initially the headings ‘Watch promo video here’ and ‘Debut single out now’ included the personal pronouns ‘watch my promo video here’ and ‘my debut single out now’. Peer feedback suggested this gave the site a ‘DIY’ look and made it apparent that this had just been created by me, while the rest of the site looks so professionally put together. I much prefer these headings now with the exclusion of these personal pronouns.
Finally, I deliberated over my artist’s name for some time. When I uploaded my debut single in 2023, I released this under the name of ‘ARI’. My thought process behind this initially was that ARI in all capitals, rather than ‘Ari’, may cause some discourse over whether ARI was a band or singular artist; ultimately attracting attention to my music. In hindsight, ‘ARI’ has been difficult to find on streaming platforms because a lot of other users go by this name. Therefore, using my full name Arianna Mullen will be easier to find. I was concerned however because my first name is shared with global pop star ‘Ariana Grande’, and worried that there would be less traction to my name on platforms such as Spotify because her music would appear first – even though our names are spelt differently, most people tend to spell my name with one N due to her spelling being more popular. Ultimately, I have decided to go by ‘Arianna Mullen’ now for multiple reasons. One being that my Instagram handle ‘@ariannamullen’ is available meaning I’m easy to find and contact. To go by ‘Ari’, my handle name would have to be followed by numerical or symbolical characters as different variations of ‘Ari’ are already taken. This is the same for other platforms such as YouTube and SoundCloud. I have updated my socials to make this switch to Arianna Mullen, however, have had difficulty with streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music. I have tried changing this internally through the Spotify for Artists website, and also through the Distrokid app, who I distributed my music through, but this seems to take some time and I am unsure of when this will update.
Bibliography:
Arctic Monkeys. ND. Available online: https://www.dominomusic.com/artists/arctic-monkeys (Accessed 8/05/2025).
ARI. 2023. ‘Flowers’. [Spotify]. Available online: https://open.spotify.com/track/2Zf7YWf73YWbizRnZzfBRs?si=coupwUsdQs663sqgaZWCjQ (Accessed 8/05/2025).
Arianna Mullen. 2025. ‘@ariannamullen_’. [Instagram]. Available online: https://www.instagram.com/ariannamullen_/ (Accessed 8/05/2025).
Arianna Mullen. 2025. ‘@ariannamullen’. [YouTube]. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/@ariannamullen (Accessed 8/05/2025).
Arianna Mullen. 2025. ‘Arianna Mullen’. [SoundCloud]. Available online: https://soundcloud.com/arianna-m-716378201 (Accessed 8/05/2025).
Arianna Mullen. 2025. Available online: https://amjmullen.wixsite.com/arianna-mullen-1 . (Accessed 8/05/2025).
Becca Bartlett. ND. Available online: https://beccabartlett.com/#press-reviews (Accessed 8/05/2025).
Gracie Abrams. 2025. Available online: https://rapidconnect.minyvinyl.com/artists/4143-gracie-abrams(Accessed 8/05/2025).
Illumination Marketing. 2025. ‘Marketing rule of 7s’. Available online: https://www.marketingillumination.com/blogs/marketing-rule-of-7s (Accessed 8/05/2025).
