How to write a band bio and press kit

Three people read a band bio: a booker deciding whether you fit a bill, a writer looking for a hook they can quote, and a fan who wants to know if you are from around here. None of them has time. The booker skims for genre, hometown, draw and a link. The writer wants one specific detail that isn't in every other bio on the pile. The fan wants to feel like the band is real. Write for all three by being concrete, short and honest.

Everything below scales from the same raw material. Start by writing down the plain facts: who is in the band, where you are based, what you sound like in terms a stranger would understand, what you have released, where you have played, and anything a stranger would find notable. That list is your kit. The rest is cutting.

The one-line is the sentence a promoter pastes into a listing or a DJ reads on air. It has to stand alone. A good one names the city, the sound, and one thing that makes you different, in that order or close to it.

• Say the genre in words a non-musician uses. "Oakland garage-soul trio" beats "a genre-defying collective."
• Include the hometown. Local press and local bookers look for it first.
• Add one hook: a horn section, a Spanish-language set, a former drummer of a band people know, a record out this month.
• Keep it under 25 words. If it needs a comma splice to fit, cut something.

Test it out loud. If it sounds like something a friend would say to another friend about you, it works. If it sounds like a poster, keep cutting.

The short bio is 80 to 120 words and does most of the work. It goes on your site, your streaming profiles, festival applications and the top of the press release. It should answer, in order: who you are, what you sound like, what you have done, and what is happening now.

Lead with the present. "La Plebe releases its third full-length in May" is a first sentence; "La Plebe formed in 2000" is a fifth sentence. History is context, not news. If you have a record, a tour or a residency coming up, that is the first line. If nothing is coming up, lead with the strongest thing you have done.

Name real venues and real bills. "Opened for the Mother Hips at the Fillmore" tells a booker more than "has shared stages with national acts." Specifics are what make a bio checkable, and checkable is what makes it credible.

The long bio runs 300 to 500 words and lives in the EPK and on your about page. It exists so a writer on deadline can pull a paragraph without calling you. Write it like a short feature about the band, not a resume.

• Open with a scene or a fact, not a claim. A sentence about where you rehearse or how the band met is a better opener than an adjective about your sound.
• Give each member one line of real detail: the instrument, plus one thing that explains what they bring.
• Describe the sound with reference points a reader can hear in their head. Two or three bands, or a decade and a place, is enough.
• Include one quote from a member that says something a press release would not. Complaints about the van count.
• Close with what is next and how to reach you.

Write it in the third person even if it feels stiff; editors will lift it whole, and a first-person bio cannot be lifted. Date it at the bottom so nobody quotes a two-year-old lineup.

Papers print whatever you send, so send something printable. That means at least 300 dpi, a horizontal frame and a vertical frame, everyone's face visible, and no text or logos baked into the image. Shoot in daylight or with a real photographer; a phone in a dim bar produces a photo nobody will run.

Name the file with the band name and the photographer's name, and put the credit in the caption. Editors will not chase you for it, they will just use a different band's photo. Keep the same photo across your site and profiles for at least a year so people recognize you.

A photo is only half the visual work. The cover art, the gig poster, the one-page site a booker clicks through to — that is where a band either looks like it means it or looks thrown together. If design is not your strong suit, a studio that handles the artwork and the band page is worth the outlay before you send the kit anywhere.

An electronic press kit is a single page or a single PDF that holds everything above plus the things a booker needs to say yes. Nobody should have to email you for a fact.

• The one-line, short bio and long bio, each labeled.
• Two or three songs that play in the browser, best one first. Do not make anyone download a zip.
• Two press photos with credits, downloadable at full size.
• One live video, even if it is a single phone clip that shows the band can play.
• Notable shows and press, with dates and outlets, as a plain list.
• Stage plot and input list for venues with a sound engineer.
• A contact name, a phone number and an email that someone actually answers.

Keep it to one URL that never changes. Print it on the back of a flyer, put it in the email signature, and update it the day something changes.

• Adjectives instead of facts. "Explosive, genre-bending, high-energy" tells a stranger nothing. "Two trombones and a drummer who used to play in a marching band" tells them a lot.
• The origin story first. Save how you met for the long bio, and cut it if it is ordinary.
• Claims that cannot be checked. "One of the Bay Area's hardest-working bands" invites the reader to disagree. A list of dates does not.
• Fake press quotes, or real quotes from a friend's blog presented as press. Writers recognize each other's names.
• A bio that never says where you are from. Local coverage is the easiest coverage to get, and it starts with the city.
• No contact, or a contact that goes to a member who is on tour. Put the person who answers on the page.
• Letting it rot. A bio that mentions a 2006 EP as "new" tells every reader the band stopped caring.

The fix for all of these is the same: reread your bio as the tired booker and ask what you would need to know to put this band on a Thursday. Then make sure it is in the first three lines.

A band bio and a resume are the same trick: say who you are, plainly, in a few lines someone will actually read. If English is a second language for you or a bandmate, a plain guide to writing a resume in clear English works the same muscles — the trimming, the ordering, the one true line at the top.