What Your Music Profile Should Say About You

Your online music profile is the bottom-line essential information on WHO you are as a band, singer, songwriter and/or musician. Your music profile, as to how it fits in the big picture online, is your biography or resume that presents you to the music industry, other musicians, and your potential fans. That makes it a very important page on the Internet, right? It needs to be interesting, well-written, informative and to-the-point, for this is you marketing yourself. When writing this document, there is much to consider to make it presentable.

Consider these scenarios:

1. An A&R rep is listening to your music on an indie radio station or webcast and thinks, “who is that?!” So they click on your name to learn more about you. Your music brought them to your profile. Will they be impressed by what they read?

2. A label rep is browsing the artist profiles on a site for a band they need for a certain project, perhaps local to them. Does your profile, gig information, and band description quickly give them enough details to discover you?

In the Internet world, any webmaster will tell you content is king. Why? Because it is how online visitors find you. The number one source for driving traffic to web pages are search engines, and it is content they want and nothing else. (Content is literally text, characters, paragraphs, sentences – it’s information.) You can easily improve the traffic to your profile by entering as much relevant content about yourself as is necessary to describe your music, history, act, image, and musical goals.

Knowing this and knowing that in this busy-busy click-happy Web world, you have to have your band description clearly stated at the top of the bio! The rest of the fill-in details are at the bottom. If you have captured the readers attention at the top, they will follow through and read more. Otherwise, they will leave your profile and look for another band that presents themselves better than you did.

The best place to start is by creating an outline, in Word (or other program). Also, know how many total characters you can use in the field you are entering information in. Use spell-check and save it for later updating. Collect your thoughts and make notes about your background, your musical history, goals, accomplishments, band members, who plays which instrument, etc.

* The music business is a BUSINESS so present yourself professionally.

The first paragraph should be an introduction. It is the lead-in to who you are, what your music specialty is (genre), where in the world you are from, and perhaps an enthusiastic quote given to you about your music. If you sound like a certain pro band or artist, what makes you different from them?

* Busy industry people may not finish reading after a few lines if the opener does not capture them quickly. And you have to live up to the hype you dish out!

The second paragraph could cover what you are currently up to musically. Here you might mention a new release you are working on, or music projects you are involved with. What promotional plans do you have to support your current activities? Mentioning an upcoming tour or gig would be good here.

The third paragraph will include band member information (who plays what) or brief mention of background experiences, instrumentation, and/or accomplishments, that accentuates your artistic development. Some sites offer tabs or certain fields for detailed information on these entries, so use the available space to present yourself wisely.

The Mission Statement section will cover your music career goals and is aimed at the industry professionals that might be searching for your particular talent. The Influences section will be who your musical influences are, so there is no need to waste the readers time mentioning them elsewhere.

You have to remember, A&R reps, labels, producers, potential collaborators, are all very busy people that have heard it all before. Do not waste words but find a way to stand out from the typical. The music you create may bring them to your profile after they heard it to learn more about you, so it is up to you to show them that you are a person that they can work with.

It is absolutely amazing to see artists that don’t take the time to do this. In countless web travels and thousands of music profiles, you see artist descriptions from as short as a one-liner like “We want to be heard,” to certain social site artist descriptions that go for MILES. There is a big difference in giving the reader vital information that should be included in your profile and info that no one will ever care about that should not.

Therein is the essence of what your music profile should be saying about you.