Tips to make you ready for music biz representation

Although your music speaks for itself, and it may already being making waves, are you ready for when a manager, promoter or the press want to work with you?

If you have an important gig or are booked for a festival, a publicist may want information from you, so why not have that information ready to go?

Big Joe Bone will be playing at Scrumpstock in Exeter this May.

Of course your music is more important than anything else. A biography is not going to make or break your career. That means that creating a useful one to send to any interested parties is easier to create than you think.

The purpose of your press pack is not to sell you as your music does the selling. At the same time you do not want to make someone wonder if you are ready for the attention your music is getting. The best way to create a useful press pack is to stick to facts. Click here for ideas for what facts to include.

The aim of the press pack is to give someone else the least work possible in finding out who you are, where you are from, what inspired your music, what you are doing right now, what you have achieved so far and what is happening, ie release names and dates and/or major gigs coming up.

You do not want to say how great you are yourself. You want to get other people to say it for you. Please don’t try to make the writing fancy or try to write like a Melody Maker journalist circa 1975. Just provide the information as clearly and concisely as you possibly can.

On the page named “Creating your band biography” I have put up some questions to answer that will create the basis of a decent press pack.

Here are some other items to include in your press pack:

• A 300dpi photograph of you/your band for use in the print press. NO logos or any writing in the shot. No words. No band name.
  • Save the jpeg file of your picture with your band/act’s name. You might be amazed how few bands think to do this. It just gives other people more work if you send your picture saved as DC1333333145.jpg or image.jpeg.
  • If you send more than one picture, please use different names for each shot or it is more work for someone else to change the file names: ie DodgembandliveinLondon.jpeg or Dodgems_in_Helsinki.jpeg, or Dodgems_3.jpeg.
• 72 dpi (ie saved for web or devices, low res) images of your logo, artwork for your release etc. A 72 dpi copy of your main image too would be great. For use online.
• Your biography. Please name the file individually, ie Dodgems_bio.docx.
• A url to your website.
• Your latest release on YouTube and/or Soundcloud. It can be an audio file on YouTube if you haven’t got a video.
• A link to where people can buy your releases on digital music retail, ie iTunes, eMusic, Tunecore etc.
• An MP3 of your latest single.
• Addresses for your social media pages ie Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud etc.
• A press only preview of your forthcoming unreleased material (such as a whole EP or album) on Soundcloud. * This is a private url to these songs that you can send to press, which the general public will not find on your Soundcloud page.
• Links to any previous press coverage you have had or quotes from any radio presenters or music industry professionals. Tweets about you are also good for this.

Once you have your press pack together, you are ready for anyone who approaches you for more information.

You may also want to consider a press campaign to promote yourself. Here is an example of an album launch on my website.

Here are examples of musicians’ press releases.