How to Create an Electronic Press Kit (EPK) for Rap Artists
A full break down on how to create and electronic press kit.
In a fast paced digital landscape an electronic press kit or EPK is an essential tool for rap artists to communicate their unique stories, identities, career achievements, aspirations or notable projects to potential industry contacts, media professionals, business partners or sponsors.
Your EPK will assist with self-promotion, acting as a bridge between your talent and industry related opportunities. Putting an EPK together is the easy part, getting it in front of the right eyes is the real challenge.
In the last 10 years I’ve helped over 100 independent rappers, producers, and local businesses build high converting EPKs that lead to increased brand visibility and generate earned press or income opportunities.
The process can be broken down into 5 easy steps that rap artists can follow to organize, plan, publish and share their EPKs.
How Do You Create An EPK?
There isn’t a proven formula for building out the perfect EPK, but there are key components and topics that need to be included in order to make it easier for the reader to understand the many benefits of working with your brand.
It’s a good idea to tailor your EPK for it’s intended purpose. It makes sense to include streaming specific data if you’re pitching to a playlist editor or detailed follower metrics to sway a potential sponsor.
Step #1 Collecting Resources
Before you start to outline or design your EPK you’ll need to collect all of your resources. Create a folder on your desktop and open up a blank Google doc or something similar to keep everything in one place.
What does an EPK consist of?
Your EPK or electronic press kit should consist of all your links, high quality visuals, your artist bio, social proof, branding assets, any performance related technical requirements and contact info.
Links,
Your EPK should make it easy for the reader to familiarize themselves with your music. It’s important to provide links to your best music and/or music videos. Analytics can help you determine which songs or videos perform best with your target audience.
Make sure to include links to your official website and all of your active social media accounts. Putting all these links into a document will make it easier to copy and paste them later on.
High quality visuals,
A key component to any EPK is high quality visuals. This includes photography, video and cover art for any recent or relevant releases. Incorporating stunning, high quality visuals communicates a level of professionalism, reinforces your image and increases the visual appeal of your EPK.
Tap into your network and plan some photoshoots that don’t look like what everybody else is doing. Choose photographers that are already producing work that aligns with your vision and image. The final edits will be memorable and promote a cohesive aesthetic for your brand.
Creative photoshoots are an investment in your brand’s perceived value and mandatory when building your EPK.
Artist Bio,
A bio is a written introduction to an artist’s identity that shares intimate details of their story, accomplishments or career highlights to provide context to other professionals or potential sponsors.
An authentically written bio adds credibility to an artist and their music, by demonstrating their dedication, relatability and industry presence.
When well planned, a bio helps fans relate to your brand but also provides information to bloggers or journalists for potential earned media opportunities, increasing the chances of accurate and favourable mentions.
Many artists neglect or underestimate the power of a well written artist bio. If you’re not hiring a professional to write for you, spend lots of time brainstorming about your specific journey as an artist, or your life struggles that you’ve overcame to get where you are.
Make things clear, cohesive and as engaging as possible.
Social Proof,
Social proof is the secret sauce behind building a brand online. Putting your press related recognitions, awards, endorsements, achievements or big name collaborations on display tremendously enhances your credibility with fans and industry professionals.
If you’ve got something to brag about drop the numbers. Including statistics or metrics from analytics or your latest Spotify Wrapped results helps to validate your audience and potential reach.
Be different and throw in a mix of written or video testimonials and reviews from other industry professionals, successful partnerships or super fans.
Touring Info & Experience,
If you’re currently on tour, or have experience touring you can add this information to your electronic press kit. Use traditional lists and timelines to visually explaining historical data or include some of your best tour photos and behind the scenes footage to showcase the energy of your fans or performances.
If you've never been on tour, showcase footage from a live performance. If you haven't had the chance to perform at a show, you can either skip this information or let the reader know how eager and prepared you are to get started.
Branding Assets,
A pixelated, low quality logo file doesn’t help anything sell, so it’s important to include hi-resolution branding assets in your design.
As a rapper, a professional presentation across your EPK and other marketing materials, will help promote trust and reliability.
Consider embedded the hi-res image files into your EPK or providing a dedicated page for downloading any assets that promotors or media professionals might need.
Technical Requirements,
If any technical requirements are needed for your performance, listing them will help inform booking agents or interested venues.
Contact Info,
Your contact information should include a way for interested parties to connect with you, your manager or whoever is running your business.
The importance of professionalism and timely, transparent communication on behalf of you or your team can not be overstate. Whoever answers the call or email needs to be on point and accurately represent your brand.
If nothing else, include a phone number and branded email address, not a gmail. Your EPK is about making a good first impression and selling yourself.
Your EPK is a live document that requires continuous effort and considerable financial investment to update and maintain. Depending on your skillsets you may need to hire a photographer, copywriter, designer or other media professionals to complete your electronic press kit.
Step #2 Format & Outline
If you’ve finished gathering all of your resources, it’s time to think about how to put it all together. Consider how people will view your EPK and what information is most important to the intended reader.
Formatting your EPK
The most common way to share your electronic press kit is via .pdf document. This type of document was designed to be independent of application software, hardware, and operating system, so most people will be able to access or print a copy.
Traditionally, a .pdf is 8.5”x11” or the size of a standard sheet of paper, so it can be easily printed. This is still a good size for your document, especially if you’re doing things on a budget or don’t have access to professional grade design software.
The whole point of your EPK is to stand out and be memorable, so try doing things differently. Design your EPK as an Instagram carousel and share it, or design it into a webpage with loading animations and clickable access to social links or embedded music videos or other content for easy viewing.
If your plan is to go above and beyond with your EPK design, make sure to have a simplified .pdf file available in preparation of unforeseen circumstances like access or loading issues. The reason a .pdf is so popular is due to accessibility so always have a back up.
Outline
After you decide on your approach, you can begin to outline the order in which you communicate your information.
Reader intent plays a major role, so the flow of your content should be cohesive in communicating key details in an order the reader can logically process.
A complete outline helps guide your final design and gives you the opportunity to recognize any issues or make any needed changes before spending the time to finalize your EPK.
Step #3 Designing Your EPK
This is where you really get a chance to shine as an artist and use your creativity to produce an EPK that will impress potential business partners or interested media. If your hiring out
Design Principals,
Design principals are unwritten rules or concepts that help guide the design process to better communicate important information. Familiarize yourself with some of these principals and apply them to your design to improve the visual presentation of your EPK.
The basic principals of design include contrast, balance, repetition, proportion, movement and white space.
Colour Selection,
If you’re already using a specific color palette for your brand you’ll want to continue to use it across all of your marketing including your EPK.
If you don’t have specific colors established for your brand you can use a tool like coolors.co or Adobe’s color.adobe.com to decide on 3 colors. Two of the colors should be in stark contrast to each other for alternating use between background and copywriting like , the third a memorable or accent color.
60/30/10 Rule,
The 60/30/10 rule is a color usage guideline that can be applied to your EPK. The rule suggests dividing the visual space into three parts: 60% a dominant color, 30% a secondary color, and 10% an accent color. In the context of your EPK or other marketing materials, this rule is applied to create a visually complete and cohesive design that improves your perceived value.
Design Softwares,
Everything will come together in your design or word processing software. Truthfully, it’s not about the software you use but what you’re able to do with it.
If you can afford a premium monthly subscription, the Adobe suite is industry standard and includes an array of softwares and advanced AI generation tools. Adobe Express subscriptions are more affordable and give artists a powerful content management system for creating assets and scheduling social media posts.
Almost a year ago, I gave up my Adobe subscription and switched to the Affinity suite. There are some things I miss about Adode, but if you want to avoid monthly subscription fees check out what Affinity is offering. I love the software and can’t wait to see what happens since being purchased by Canva.
Canva is a powerful editing platform that aims to make it easy for people produce high quality assets. The free version provides more than enough for an artist to produce a stunning EPK or you can go premium to access all kinds of templates and design resources.
There is nothing wrong with using Google Docs, Pages or Microsoft Office to create your EPK. These softwares are readily available and can produce professional looking documents with the option to export .pdf files.
Recommended softwares,
Adobe CC - Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premier, After Effects
Adobe Express - intuitive design editor and content scheduling
Affinity Suite - Designer, Photo, Publisher
Canva - intuitive design editor and content scheduling with premium options
Google Docs - a free word processing style software
Design Tips,
- Iterate and give yourself multiple options to choose from.
Step #4 Proofreading
One of the worst things you could do is publish or share your EPK with any spelling mistakes, errors or inconsistencies. Nobody is going to take you serious when they notice mistakes or find out that key information isn’t accurate.
Accuracy, clarity and attention to detail communicate professionalism to an overwhelming extent. Spelling mistakes are such minor errors that their appearance indicates a lack of preparation and effort. Don’t be that artist.
Also don’t forget to verify any numerical data that you’re including in your EPK.
Most image editing softwares don’t have spell check, so writing all of your text/copywriting in a word processor or software like Notion can help you avoid most spelling mistakes. Spell checking is a good tool to use but it can’t help you if you don’t know the difference between there, their or they’re.
Step #5 Sharing Your EPK
At this point you’ve spent hours of your time and invested a bunch of money into assets for your EPK. The next thing you’ll need to do is prepare to share it.
What do you do with your EPK?
The best thing to do with your EPK is share it with potential business partners, sponsors or interested media and make it easy for people to find on their own.
Having your EPK in .pdf format makes it easy to attach to emails or to make available for download via dedicated link, webpage or Google drive.
In an ideal situation, you should have a dedicated page on your own domain designed to mirror your EPK, with visible download links to a .pdf version and any hi-res logos, images or video files that could assist promoters or media teams in publishing better content. Having a highlightable text version of your bio on page makes it easy for bloggers or journalists to copy and paste when they’re pressed for time.
Final Thoughts
An electronic press kits is an overlooked but powerful tool for rap artists to implement into their marketing plans. Use your EPK to establish yourself as a credible, reputable, and influential rapper, worthy of extended media coverage or paid opportunities like partnerships and sponsorships with other important brands.
FAQs,
What is an EPK?
An electronic press kit or EPK is a digital collection of marketing materials that can be easily shared for the purposes of securing business partnerships, sponsorships, bookings or press attention. Essentially it’s a digital promo package, CV, resume, business card and pitch deck combined into a single sharable document.
What’s included in an EPK?
Your EPK should include things like links to music and social media, high quality visuals, an artist bio, social proof, branding assets, performance experience or requirements and direct contact information.
Do I really need an EPK?
A high converting EPK is a marketing asset that can help generate more income from your music and open up further opportunities. Having an EPK is not a specific requirement, more a tool to increase your perceived value and provide key information to industry professionals
What does an EPK look like?
An EPK is a professional or creatively designed document that reflect the individual identity of the artist. Realistically an EPK can resemble anything from a digital resume or proposal to video interview or complete digital experience.
How much does it cost to make an EPK?
An EPK can be done completely free, or cost as much as you can comfortably invest into assets like photography, video, a professional artist bio or hired graphic designers.
Related,
HUNDX
HUNDX
