What is EPK?

An EPK video is a video an artist places inside an electronic press kit (EPK), the digital press kit that booking agents, music journalists, playlist curators and reviewers use to size up an act. The EPK itself is a press kit in electronic form, usually a web page, gathering a biography, music, press photos, videos, tour dates, press coverage and contact details in one place.

Press kits are an old public relations tool: a packet of documents, photos and other material sent to newspapers and magazines.^[1] The electronic version bundles the same things digitally, and for musicians it usually adds audio-visual material such as music clips, high-resolution press photos, promotional videos, tour dates, reviews and interviews.^[1] The first known EPK in today's sense went live on the web on 8 January 1995, built by Andre Gray for the R&B singer Aaron Hall.^[1]

Guidance written for musicians suggests embedding one or two videos, not a whole channel, and choosing ones tied to the new release: the official video for a single, a live version of it, or footage from the making of the album.^[2] The videos should play inside the kit itself rather than send the reader somewhere else.^[2] The people on the other end are booking agents, music journalists, playlist curators, reviewers and potential collaborators.^[2]

The examples below are not EPKs themselves. They are catalog videos of the kinds such a kit usually embeds: an official music video, an official live version, and a live session filmed for NPR Music's Tiny Desk series. On Videojam, an artist page gathers an act's videos, bio and links behind one link, which is the same job a video-first press kit does.