Your EPK and booking kit: what a promoter looks at in two minutes

Dave reads band emails on the tram at half eight, standing, between Piccadilly Gardens and his stop. He has a phone, one thumb, and forty seconds before the doors open. He is going to click one link, two at most, and make up his mind. Everything you build in this chapter is made to fit into those forty seconds, on a small screen.

And there is a second scene, which everyone forgets. Three weeks later, it is a yes. Dave builds the Facebook event on his lunch break and looks for a photo, five lines of bio, your logo. If he finds them in two clicks, your date is announced that evening.

EPK means electronic press kit: the press pack, online. In the UK you will also hear press kit, and one-sheet for the one-page version. In France, dossier de presse; in Germany, Pressemappe. When a booker in Leipzig replies "schick mir mal euer EPK", he expects one page, not six PDFs.

So an EPK is not a one-page PDF. The PDF is one element of the EPK, the one you print or upload into a festival form. The EPK is the page that holds everything: live video, one or two tracks, bio in three lengths, downloadable photos, numbers, dates, tech spec, contact. One short address that never changes.

Three formats, in this order. The web page first: a sub-page of your site or a no-cost page builder, as long as it opens on a phone in under three seconds, with no login and no pop-up to close.

Then the one-page PDF, exported from the page, under 2 MB, selectable text, named properly (WetPavement-EPK-2026.pdf). Last, the shared folder, as a download area only: HD photos, logo, bios as text, tech spec, set to "anyone with the link" and tested from another account.

One weekend? The page. The rest follows from it.

What you need at tiers 1 and 2 is modest and precise: one song, played straight through, filmed on a fixed wide shot from the back by the desk, two to four minutes. Not a montage of ten clips.

Sound is everything. A phone mic clips on a kick drum, and a video with squashed sound gets closed in ten seconds. Ask the engineer, at soundcheck, for a stereo recording of the front of house onto a USB stick or a pocket recorder off an aux send, then line that sound up with the picture. Costs nothing, decides everything.

Hiya Tom, Priya from Wet Pavement, we're on at yours Saturday. Any chance you could record a stereo of the front of house during our set, onto a stick we bring or our little recorder off an aux? It's for our live video and we'll credit you on it. If it's a faff, say so and we'll manage. Cheers, see you Saturday.

The first fifteen seconds decide: start when it is playing, not on the intro. The title carries the name, the song, the venue, the year: "Wet Pavement: Drain (live at the Gatehouse basement, Sheffield, 2026)". The same recording gives you a vertical 60 to 90 second clip for your socials; it serves your promo, not your proof. A promoter wants a whole song.

No gig to film yet? A session in the practice room, straight through, and say so in the title.

A bio serves three people: the promoter skims it for ten seconds, whoever does the venue's socials pastes it into the event the day you get a yes, a festival panel reads it to place you on a stage. So three lengths, as copyable text: short (250 characters at most), medium (600 to 800), long (1,500 to 2,000).

Method: write the long one, cut it down to the medium, boil the medium down to the short. Third person, and you start with the present, never with the year you formed. Put in at least one detail nobody else could write: a venue name, a checkable fact. Strike out "unique sound", "authentic", "infectious energy".

Wet Pavement are garage-punk from Sheffield: three people, songs that are done in two minutes, a singer who plays too loud and sings about bus stops, and a room that moves anyway.

If a sentence could describe a thousand other bands, it does not describe yours, and a writing assistant produces the same bio for everyone. "For fans of" helps, if it is accurate and if those artists play rooms your size.

The numbers: three, dated and sourced. Dates played in twelve months, best headcount with the venue, and above all the crowd you can bring to the promoter's city. That is the one promoters and landlords want; monthly listeners interest almost nobody.

Go through your page, or whatever stands in for it, point by point. The first three are blockers: until they are ticked, nothing goes out. The rest gets built while you work the pub back rooms of your own city.

The photos: no need for a studio, but you need someone who can hold a camera and forty minutes. One landscape, one portrait, one square, faces sharp, plain background, air around you so the venue can crop. Plus a live set, wide shot with the crowd. Files at 3,000 pixels, named, credited.

An AI-generated photo? No: you can tell, and the day the venue puts it on the poster, they are the ones who look like they have been had.

The tech spec tells the engineer what you need; the rider tells the venue how many of you there are and how to look after you. One page each, realistic. Asking a pub with two wedges for twelve monitor mixes does not make you look professional, it worries Dave. Nobody reads them in the first email, everybody looks for them after the yes.

Last, do what Dave does before he clicks: type the band's name into a search engine, private window, on a phone. What should come up: your EPK, your main social, your streaming page, same handle and same photo everywhere. What closes the tab: an account silent for six months, a site still showing last year's dates, a band with the same name ranking above you.

And keep a page wherever venues build their events: without it, you do not exist in their tool.

The words change, and so do the expectations. At home: press kit, one-sheet, blurb, tech spec, stage plot, input list. Promoters look at a link that plays, how many you bring to their city and your past events; arts centres and funded venues read the long bio and the track record.

In Germany: Pressemappe, Pressetext, Pressefotos druckfähig (print quality, plenty still print a monthly programme), a Techrider that gets read closely. A short bio and tech spec in German make a real difference.

In France: dossier de présentation, or dossier artistique for a funded venue, fiche technique, plan de scène, rider. Bars look at the video and your local crowd; funded venues read the long bio and your structure.

Never send, in any of the three: audio files as attachments; a six-page PDF of band history; numbers with no source or period; a talking-head video to introduce yourselves (they want your music, not your pitch); a link that says "request access"; five links to five platforms hoping Dave will pick one.

And photos belong to whoever took them: a permission email, a credit everywhere.

Your EPK fits on one screen, your video shows your faces with desk sound, your numbers are true and dated, and someone can copy your bio without emailing you. It is the only document in your life as a musician that you build once and that then works on every email you send.