Top Tips for Writing a Great Music Biography or Artist Profile

When you’re on a mission to get your music heard, the only thing that matters is that your music is good, right? Is it catchy? Does it have a good riff? Do people want to sing or dance along to it in their kitchen? Does it give people chills, or make them feel something every time they hear it? Even if you can answer yes to all of these questions, that isn’t all it takes to get your tracks played on the radio. There are many other things that factor into whether your music gets radio airplay. And one thing that is often overlooked by independent artists, is the music biography or artist profile that should be submitted alongside any music being sent to radio stations for playlist consideration.

Think back to all those televised singing competitions we’ve watched in the past 20 years or so. They are full of super talented singers and bands, but the thing that really gets an audience behind an act, is their story. From over 15 years working with radio programmers and music directors at over 35,000 radio stations across the world, we know that often a great story in your artist profile or bio can be the difference between getting essential radio airplay, or not.

So, here’s our Top Tips for Writing a Compelling Artist Profile:

Keep Your Music Biography Short and Engaging

It needs to be short and to the point. Have you faced adversity to pursue your music career? Did your Grandmother always say you were a natural performer, and you now want to make her proud? Is singing and sharing your music with others the thing that makes you happy and gets you out of bed in the morning? Then, it’s important to say that, but don’t go into loads of detail about it. There’s a fine balance. It needs to be short and concise, giving important and interesting information about you and your music, but not a length that puts people off reading it. As a guide, 150 to 200 words is a good length and gives you the space to include information about your origin story, musical influences and processes, releases, and notable collaborations. To be engaging, it should read like a story, so make sure you write your bio in third-person, as if someone else has written it about you. Remember to avoid using “I” (or “we” if you're in a band).

Highlight What Makes You Unique as an Artist

Identify something that sets you apart from other artists or musicians and write about that. If you write the same things that everyone else writes, then you look just like everyone else. You have got to put together a music bio that stands out. The story behind your music can be just as important as the music itself. If you give radio programmers a compelling reason to want to play and talk about your music, it’s far more likely to get airplay. Information about yourself, the song, or even your writing process, that is compelling and adds another dimension to your music, is always more interesting. If you have the same formulaic bio that radio programmers and music directors have seen a thousand times before, nothing stands out about you and it could be the difference between your track being picked up and getting airplay, or not getting played on the radio. I’m not saying you should write a sob story or overshare about your life, but something, a little different, can make you appear more personable and will give presenters something to say about you when they’re playing your track on the radio.

Proofread Your Artist Bio for Grammar, Spelling and Clarity

Get it proofread or edited by someone who can spot any spelling and grammar issues, and make sure it reads well. This is pretty self-explanatory, but you would be surprised how many artist profiles and bios we have seen over the years that have grammatical errors, and spelling mistakes. Sometimes, we have artists that don’t speak English as their first language who submit their bio in English, which is not a problem at all, but it has clearly been translated using an online tool and perhaps the meaning has been lost in translation. If you want to be taken seriously as an artist, it is important to have this proofread by someone, preferably a native English-speaker if you are submitting your profile in English, to make sure that what you are saying is clear to readers.

Showcase Your Achievements Without Bragging

There’s a fine line between talking about some of your achievements as an artist, and straight up bragging. If you are an artist that has won competitions such as ‘Battle of the Bands’, or your music has been showcased on specialist radio shows for unsigned artists, you should definitely be talking about those things in your artist profile. Equally, notable performances, such as opening up for a more-established band, or even opening a music festival, should feature in your bio. Talking about your collaborations with other artists can also help you to establish credibility and secure your position as an up-and-coming artist that people should be taking notice of.

Be Authentic & Don’t Oversell Yourself

Please don’t lie or try to make yourself sound a lot bigger or more successful than you actually are. This can be a real issue! We all know someone that has told a little white lie on their CV to get a job, but you are an artist living in an age where pretty much everything you claim can be checked out online. So, if you haven’t played in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands of people at Glastonbury Festival or Coachella, you haven’t won the Eurovision Song Contest, you didn’t perform at the half time show of the Superbowl, and you haven't reached number 1 in the charts in 16 different countries, please don’t say that you have! Not being honest about these things can seriously diminish your credibility as an artist.

Update Your Music Biography Regularly

This is really important and is something that a lot of artists often completely forget about. We’ve had bands submit bios that they wrote when the band first formed 5 years prior, when their average age was 19, and they were playing in small bars to 10 of their friends. They hadn’t updated it to include how their career had evolved, what they’d been up to in the 5 years since writing it (which included some pretty awesome things they should have been shouting from the rooftops), and really awkwardly, still listed a band member that they had parted ways with. Your music career is going to develop and change, so your profile needs to develop and change alongside it.