A real DJ press kit, taken apart

Name, discipline, city, before any scrolling

ShyMan — DJ and electronic music producer, Miami. A promoter deciding whether to keep reading needs three facts, and needs them without scrolling. Anything clever you put here instead only delays the question they are actually asking, which is whether you are right for their room.

Music that plays immediately

Releases with embedded players, not a list of titles and not a folder link. If someone has to log in, download or unzip anything to hear you, they will not hear you. This is the single most common failure in the kits I receive, and it is fatal in a way nobody ever tells you, because the reply simply never comes.

A biography at three lengths

One place, so nobody has to write their own version of you. Publish a line for a caption, a paragraph for a listing and the long one for a feature, and the person filing at deadline will use yours rather than cutting it badly. The bad cut is the one that then circulates.

Dates, because they are evidence

A booker reads a list of rooms you have held and learns more in four seconds than a paragraph of adjectives will tell them. Keep past dates up as well as upcoming ones: an empty calendar in February says nothing about the summer you had.

What you run, not only what you play

The label and the party series sit on the page for a reason. Running Other Dimension Records and the Glitch Party Series is the difference between a DJ and someone with a scene around them. If you press records, run a night or host a radio show, that belongs here — it is the part a promoter cannot get from your SoundCloud.

One address that gets answered

A dedicated booking address, on its own page, next to what you are actually available for: club nights, festivals, private events. Not a contact form that goes nowhere, and not the personal address you check on Sundays.

What actually happens on the other end

Here is the part the templates never mention. Your press kit is almost never read at a desk. It is opened on a phone, between two other things, by someone with eleven of them to get through and a flyer due tomorrow.

They are looking for four things, in this order:

• A photograph they can put on a flyer without asking you for a better one
• One line of biography they can paste into a listing
• Evidence you can hold a room — dates, a mix, a venue they recognise
• An address that gets a reply

What ends it early

• An expired file-sharing link
• A 40MB PDF that will not open on mobile data
• A third-person biography still describing a project you stopped two years ago

Send a link, not an attachment

A PDF is a photocopy of one afternoon. From the moment you send it, it is out of date and you cannot fix it.

Every practical advantage sits with the link. It is never stale, because adding a release updates every kit you have ever sent. It opens on a phone in a second. There is no press-kit-FINAL-v3-new.pdf problem, because there is one address and it is always the current one.

And there is the part nobody says out loud: it reads differently. A promoter who opens an attachment and a promoter who opens a site have formed two impressions of you before reading a word. One looks like someone applying for something. The other looks like someone who already runs an operation. The information can be identical; the standing is not.

One honest caveat. Some festival submission systems still demand a file upload. Keep a one-page PDF for those forms, treat it as the exception, and make the link the thing you actually send to people.

What this example still gets wrong

An example is only useful if it is honest about its gaps. Three things are missing from mine as it stands, and they are the next things I will add.

• No tech rider. For a DJ set that is four lines — mixer, number of decks, monitoring — and publishing it ends an email conversation that otherwise happens the week of the show.
• No downloadable photo pack. A designer currently has to save images off the page. One link to print-resolution shots, credited, would save them the ask.
• No press quotes. Two lines from someone who wrote about you, with the outlet named, do more than a paragraph you wrote about yourself.

The checklist

• Name, what you do and where, visible without scrolling
• Music that plays on the page, no login and no download
• Biography at three lengths
• Photographs at print resolution, at least one horizontal, photographer credited
• Upcoming and past dates
• A tech rider, however short
• What you run beyond DJing — label, night, radio
• One booking address that gets answered
• All of it at a link you control, not a file you attach