EPK or press release: they answer different questions
One says who you are. The other says what just happened. Sending the wrong one is the most common way an otherwise good approach gets ignored.
They are not competing formats, and you do not choose between them for a career. You choose between them for a given email, and the test is one question: is there news?
The difference, in one table’s worth of words
- An EPK answers who you are. A press release answers what just happened.
- An EPK is evergreen and updated forever. A press release is dated and dead within a month.
- An EPK is read by promoters, bookers and labels. A press release is read by journalists, radio and playlist editors.
- An EPK is as long as it needs to be. A press release is one page, ruthlessly.
- An EPK is made once and then simply exists. A press release goes out three to six weeks before the thing it announces.
When you need the EPK
Approaching a promoter. Answering a booking enquiry. Being added to a line-up. Someone asking for your assets. Anything where the other person needs to know what you are rather than what you are announcing — which is most of the year.
When you need the press release
A record coming out, a tour announced, a label launched, a residency starting. Something with a date attached that a writer could report.
If you cannot finish the sentence "on the fourteenth of March…", you do not have a press release. You have an EPK and a wish.
What happens when you send the wrong one
Send a press release to a booker and you have handed someone deciding a Friday night a document about a record. They have to go looking for the thing they actually need, and mostly they do not.
Send an EPK to a journalist with no news in it and there is nothing to write. It gets filed, kindly, and forgotten — and your next email starts from further back than the first.
A release announcement needs both
This is the part that trips people. The press release carries the news and the date. It then links to the EPK for everything a writer needs after they decide to cover it: photographs at print resolution, the long biography, the back catalogue.
One is the pitch, the other is the archive behind it. The reason the release can stay one page is that the EPK exists to hold everything else.
Common questions
- What is the difference between an EPK and a press release?
- An EPK is evergreen and answers who you are — music, biography, photographs, dates, contact. A press release is dated and announces one specific thing, usually a record or a tour, written for people who might report it.
- Do I need both?
- You need an EPK permanently. You need a press release only when there is genuinely news, and when there is, it should link to the EPK rather than repeat it.
- How long should a music press release be?
- One page. The news in the first sentence, the essential facts under it, and a link to everything else. Anything longer is being skimmed anyway.