What to put in a band EPK (and what promoters actually read)

A promoter asks for your EPK. You have a bio in a Google Doc, press shots in someone else’s Drive, the stage plot in an email from last year, and a SoundCloud link that may or may not still play. By the time you have zipped it together, the booking conversation has moved on.

The short answer: a band EPK is one page with a short bio, two or three tracks that play straight away, a press shot, live video, links, upcoming shows, and one booking contact. BandVolt’s free EPK maker puts all of that on a public page with a custom URL - free for every band, Basic and Premium, and no account required for the people who open it.

What a promoter actually does with your link

It is worth understanding the audience, because it changes what you put on the page.

A promoter booking a support slot has maybe fifteen bands to look at and about ninety seconds for each. They are answering three questions, in this order:

1. What do they sound like? Not what genre you claim. What it sounds like when the first chorus arrives.
2. Can they draw, and can they play? Live video, past shows, anything that suggests you have done this before.
3. How do I book them, and will they reply? One contact, obviously placed.

Anything on your page that does not help with those three questions is decoration. The single most common EPK mistake is burying the music under four paragraphs of formation history.

What your press kit can hold

Your EPK is a proper press page, not a dump of files:

• Hero and story - band name, logo, tagline, and a bio you write (or draft with AI)
• Music - feature tracks from your BandVolt library with a waveform player
• Photos and videos - gallery shots plus YouTube embeds
• Booking and links - contact details, streaming and social links, plus upcoming shows pulled automatically from the band’s flagged calendar events
• Shareable URL - a custom URL you can send anywhere; publish when ready, unpublish when you need to take it offline

Preview before you go live. View counts and a simple analytics chart help you see whether the link is actually being opened.

Writing the bio

This is the part that stops bands, so here is a structure that works. Three paragraphs, shortest first.

The hook (one or two sentences). What you sound like and where you are from. Concrete comparisons beat adjectives - “somewhere between early Idles and a Belfast pub lock-in” tells a promoter more than “energetic alternative rock”.

The evidence (two or three sentences). Releases, notable shows, support slots, radio play, anything a stranger can verify. This is where credibility comes from, and it is the section most bands leave out because it feels like bragging. It is not bragging on a press page; it is the entire point of a press page.

The now (one or two sentences). What is current - the new single, the tour, what you are working on. This is the paragraph you will update most often, so keep it separate and easy to swap.

Write a short version and a long version. The short one gets pasted into listings by people who will not ask your permission first, so make sure the version they will find is one you are happy with.

The photo

One good high-resolution press shot beats twelve phone photos. Landscape orientation, because that is the shape of every listing and every banner it will end up in. If you have to choose between an artful shot where nobody’s face is visible and a plain shot where the band looks like the band, take the plain one - a promoter is trying to recognise you at load-in, not curate a gallery.

Built from the music you already keep in BandVolt

The press kit pulls from the same workspace your band already uses for versions, setlists, the calendar, and organised band files. You are not maintaining a separate “EPK folder” that drifts out of date - the tracks and story live next to the rest of the band’s work, and gigs you flag on the shared calendar flow through automatically as upcoming shows on the EPK.

That automatic bit matters more than it sounds. The reason most band press kits are out of date is not laziness; it is that updating them is a separate chore nobody owns. When the upcoming shows section reads from the calendar you already keep for rehearsals, it stays current because of work you were doing anyway.

For private listen links to a producer or a friend, public song and collection shares still cover that job - song links in send your music to anyone, no account needed, and full album or EP links in how to send your EP to a label. The EPK is for the full press package; a share link is for “have a listen to this”.

Optional AI bio - 2 Volts per draft

Stuck staring at a blank bio field? The optional AI bio writer turns short notes (hometown, genre, releases, live highlights) into a draft bio, elevator pitch, and tagline options. Each Generate or Regenerate spends 2 Volts from your band balance - the same Volts pool as AI Mix Summary (1 Volt) and Mix Health (5 Volts). Drafts are not auto-published; you review and apply what you want. Spent Volts are credited back if generation fails. See our Terms of Service for the full Volts policy.

Basic bands get 10 Volts per month; Premium gets 200. The press kit page itself stays free either way.

A word on using it well: the draft is a starting point, not a finished bio. Feed it specifics - venue names, release titles, what your live show is actually like - and edit the result until it sounds like your band. A generic bio is worse than a short one.

A pre-send checklist

Before you send that link to anyone who matters:

• The first track plays within a couple of seconds of the page loading
• The short bio is genuinely short
• There is one obvious booking contact, and somebody checks that inbox
• The press shot is high resolution and landscape
• Upcoming shows are current (or the section is empty rather than showing last year)
• You have opened the link yourself, on a phone, logged out

That last one catches more problems than the other five combined.

One link, then move on with the gig

Promoters want something they can skim in thirty seconds: who you are, how you sound, how to book you. BandVolt’s free EPK maker builds that page for you - free for every band, kept next to the music you already manage.

When you are ready, sign up free and publish your press kit.