Task 1: Electronic Press Kit
Task 2: Supporting Commentary
The fundamental aim of my EPK is to showcase my broad range of capabilities, interests and skill set. The EPK needs to reflect that I am a musician first, producer second, and in my limited experience working with artists, I have seen that having my priorities in that order leads to a better working relationship, more enjoyment in the creative process and, crucially, a better end product. I didn’t want the content to be too wordy, as I would much rather people get an idea of my various services and show evidence for the projects that I have already been part of.
After the front page, I immediately wanted a sample of my own music and my bio, which includes my main musical influences. This will indicate to artists with a similar taste that I am someone worth contacting to collaborate with, and attaching one of my songs directly next to it goes deeper into how these other artists impact my own art and what they can expect from me. Once that is established, I can then show my current client portfolio alongside testimonials. I would very much like to have more notoriety with the artists I work with, though of course at this level in my career this aspect will always be limiting. Developing and evidencing good relationships with lesser-known artists is still essential to show others with a larger fanbase that I show good faith no matter who I work with, and commercial success concedes the priority to good songs and good people.
The general colour scheme of the site is white, purple and navy blue, which I felt evoked my role as a producer and the genres I work within. It has a very professional and minimalist sheen that spoke to me and also happens to reflect a lot of my clothing in promotional photos. The photos themselves are all embedded as backgrounds, as it felt far more space efficient, and it felt unnecessary to make whole sections just dedicated to photos, which wouldn’t communicate anything other than what I look like. Integrating them along with information makes each paragraph feel evidenced and real, as you can see the person behind it every time you read something.
I realise too that my online presence will be biased to sites that have younger demographics, i.e., Instagram. It is important to realise that Instagram’s mediums (primarily video and visual content) don’t clash with that of my EPK/website. Instagram’s Reels, Posts and Stories work brilliantly for short-form, quick, flashy and attention-grabbing content that sits well in the media cycle that is consumed by under-30s, but those who have a deeper and potentially professional interest will be drawn from my account via a bio link to my website that houses my EPK, where the main currency is information rather than content.
In order to achieve my goal to be a producer/writer partner to the next generation of exceptional, ambitious and talented independent artists, I have to consider how each of these mediums cater to the required demographics. That is why I appreciate and take advantage of the differences between social media and my EPK; one draws attention to the other and helps convert attention into opportunity, without which the attention is less meaningful or useful.
I look up to producer/songwriters such as Jack Antonoff, who reportedly (people.com) met Taylor Swift at the 2012 MTV award ceremony, and they bonded over their shared love of the band Yazoo. Music events such as gigs, competitions and fundraisers are the best ways to form true connections in the industry. Even despite the prevalence of social media, there is no substitute for in-person interaction and chemistry which ensures a working relationship lives past the initial communication stage and ultimately into the studio. The primary limitation is, of course, geographical reach – social media and the internet have made it so that a Soho-based producer can work with an artist from Los Angeles without even meeting. Some of those initial connections are what result in massive era-defining collaborations (e.g., Benny Blanco and Ed Sheeran).
In using WIX to make my EPK, I was reminded of the amount of hidden costs in making, publishing and retaining an online presence. There’s no use in crafting something professional and commercially viable if it’s undermined by low-res visuals or a free domain that signals “temporary” or lacks conviction and singularity. These are the details that quietly communicate investment and professionalism. A great example of this is social media handles: the high-profile celebrities and musicians simply use their own names, i.e., “Bruno Mars” or “Eminem”. This level of notoriety is obviously out of reach at this point, but a concise tag such as “SolomonProducer” or “SolomonMusic” is worth the cost on certain platforms and especially for domain names that have an easily discoverable cost.
I was very fortunate in the way of trademarks, copyright and image rights. Through producing my own tracks and having friends do photography and videography, I didn’t have to worry too much about including material that I didn’t have the legal right to use. There was the idea to put in images of studios where I have visited or had the privilege of recording in, but if I don’t hold the rights or haven’t licensed it properly, it can’t be included. Even with my own work, ensuring everything is clearly attributed and protected feels increasingly important as I try to grow. A strong identity is vulnerable without the groundwork to secure it.
As previously stated, handles and domains have a real impact on how easily someone can find and remember you. I tried to keep everything consistent across platforms, which is harder than it sounds when most of the obvious names are already taken. Still, having a unified online presence reduces friction and makes it easier for people to reach out—making it far more likely that something meaningful or professional comes from that first point of contact. For example, I try to use only my first name, Solomon, as it is unique enough that it is easy to identify me without my surname “Hughes”. It lends some sense of confidence and uniqueness that I back myself enough to use only one name. It also has visual appeal, as can be seen in the first image of my EPK.
Evidence of Group Work
The first ideas for the EPK came from the group WITCI seminars, where I took inspiration from others who had already half-completed websites and workshopped with each of them to make the first draft of my artist bio. I realised early on the importance of succinctness and only using relevant information. Things such as spatial allocation of information and keeping different materials separate make for much easier readability. The main sections consist of artist bio, client portfolio, testimonials, services/skills, goals and ideas. In a workshop session we compared the effectiveness of condensing each of these topics into larger sums to save space. We found it far easier to take in and retain information when it was sectioned off into simple “bite-sized” paragraphs or bullet points. This was especially useful when it came to listing the services I offer. I asked my peers for advice on how to present my wide variety of talents whilst also having a set professional identity and not spreading myself too thin. Using the umbrella term “Producer” worked well for covering my technical abilities as a composer, arranger and engineer, and so having the “Musician” and “Producer” titles on either side of me on the cover photo was quite an early decision. To delve further into each, I listed my services on a later slide next to a paragraph outlining my goals and ambitions.
As my career develops, so will my portfolio of work. At the moment I don’t have any commercial examples of songs that I have produced for other artists. Being able to include sound bites as I have done for a track off of my debut EP is of huge benefit to people’s impression of my style. But as I found when discussing the effectiveness of my EPK in the later stages with a group of peers, it doesn’t quite show off my versatility of genre and style the way that I would ideally want it to. The natural limitation of being a 1st-year production student, as previously mentioned, is the amount of commercially viable work I have to show off to potential collaborators. I can note my collaborators for the time being as I have done and include their testimonials, but in the future I would like to have samples of the music that I have helped create in order to “show, not tell”, as tangibility is a huge part of what I value in other musicians and their promotional material. In looking at producers’ websites and EPKs, the first thing that came to my attention is the excessive writing and troubling lack of musical material. I like to think that my “proof is in the pudding” way of working would appeal to the kind of artists that I want to work with. I ran this idea past various composers, performers and fellow producers who were very supportive and said they would much rather see and hear a producer’s work than read about it. I believe that (as has been attested to in workshops) my EPK in its current state is indicative of this future progression and sits in a good place to signal my skillset and abilities to my target audience.
