How to Build an Effective Press Kit for a Band

The press kit is an important part of any musician's toolbox. Press kits help your band get played on radio shows, get reviews, and build industry contacts that you can use to push your career to the next level--when they're done right. A bad or underdeveloped press kit doesn't really help anyone. Here's a few tips for building a press kit for your band that will get results, leading to more gigs, more fans, and a better career.

1. Concentrate on quality. Poor quality photos, bad recordings, and misspellings throw you out of the running. Your band's press kit should be fully developed and impressive to look at. If necessary, look into design companies, or at least spend a lot of time getting a press kit together that's visually stimulating, well-put together, and of above average quality.

2. Be original. No matter who you're sending press kits to, know that they're getting band press kits from all over the place nearly constantly. They'll review your press kit eventually, but you can get them to look at it faster if you can make it original and eye-catching. For example, for an album I did called Doris, Buzz and Friends (check it out here) I sent out press kits in envelopes shaped like dolphins. Sometimes, the dolphins had speech bubbles that taunted the reviewers by name. These got me a response, because it was funny, stayed with the theme of the album, and most importantly, it made the recipient of the press kit curious. Cultivate curiosity. Be a little weird. It's always better than being dull in the music industry.

3. Make it easy and succinct. Band reviewers, radio station workers, and other music industry folk have one thing in common: they're busy. Make sure you put a cover letter in your band's press kit that covers the main points of why they should listen to your music, gives a few important facts about your band, and shows why you're interesting and worthy of their attention. You can get into more detail inside the actual press kit, but it'll help you out a lot to have a lot of succinct information in the first area of the kit.

4. Considering a digital press kit. Electronic press kits, or EPKs, are becoming very popular with help of websites like Sonicbids. However, this popularity has its drawbacks; since nearly every serious band knows about EPKs, nearly every serious band has one, and standardized EPK websites stifle originality and make it hard for your press kit to gain the attention that will help your band. Also, because they're so easy to build and send around, the people who receive the press kits get tired of EPKs fast. Focus on your physical press kit, but it doesn't hurt anything to use an EPK when a venue, music website, or radio station asks for one.

Do you have any other tips for building an effective press kit for musicians or bands? Post in our comments section below