Jan 10

Jan 10 Marketing Guides: Writing A Bio

I'm not exactly sure when having a biography started being considered some kind of cardinal sin for artists. My theory is that it stems from the trickle-down effect of the current marketing strategies employed by major labels. Wanting to give the impression that artists, who have dedicated years of hard work to their craft, were actually an overnight success.

I also can’t count the number of times I've found myself in a situation where I'm trying to write an article about a new song, create an email or social post to promote a show, or simply engage with an artist on a deeper level as a fan, only to come across a bio that simply states "just a sad lil guy" or focuses solely on smashing beers. With a large number of artists not even bothering to have a bio at all.

While there may be an argument to be made for the overnight success, effortless genius, "came out of nowhere" strategy employed by labels, it is crucial to bear in mind the extensive resources that these artists have at their disposal to maintain such an unapproachable public image. It’s fine for a promoter, producer or media outlet to not be able to find out who you are publicly if there is someone profiling you privately to them. However, for most artists this just isn’t the case. Who you are, where you came from, what you have achieved and why people should care about you needs to be accessible. You need a bio.

A bio tells the story of you as an artist, establishes your credentials and distinctly defines your sound to it’s reader. For a fan it provides a point of deeper engagement. For a music professional it provides an essential piece of content from which they can work knowing they are representing you as an artist how you have defined that you want to be represented.

How To Write A Bio

Condensing your story, achievements, sound, influences, personality and goals into a succinct 250-400 word, 3-4 paragraph piece of writing can be pretty daunting to begin with.

If the idea of getting started is making you want to close this article - consider reaching out to a music writer that you like. Chances are they writing biographies as a side hustle too.

Alternatively at the end of this piece there will be some simple AI Prompts to help a platform like Chat GPT or Claude AI to get your biography largely written for you.

Otherwise, break it down it digestible steps are get started.

Do Your Research

To get started you need to understand both yourself and the format you are trying to create.

Start by looking up your favourite bands and influences, finding their biographies and reading them. Take note of what you like and what you don’t like.

Next you’ll need to really understand yourself as an artist or band. To do so answer a series of questions about yourself and your music.

When did you form? Why did you start writing music? Who are your influences? How do you describe your sound? How do you hate seeing your sound described?

A full breakdown of questions to ask yourself can be found here.

It will seem like a lot when you’re answering the questions, but the more you understand yourself the simpler everything becomes.

Follow a Structure

Now you have an idea of who you are and what you’re trying to do it’s time to condense it into a useable format. Ideally you will write your bio in three formats - a short (50 - 100 words), medium (100-200 words) and full length biography (250 - 400 words). Start with your full length biography and then trim down. This will ensure brand consistency in language across each format rather than writing each separately.

Aim to write 4 paragraphs initially following the format:

Introduction: Use one or two sentence to quickly define who you are and what you sound like. This might be the only part a lot of people read, so ensure it captures the guts of who you are.
Your Music: Go deeper into your sound. Define your genre, vividly describe how you sound, name any artists you sound like or are inspired by. Your reader should have an idea of what you sound like without hearing you.
Your Story: State your origins, where you are now and what your future goals are. Keep it snappy.
Your Achievements: Use this as an opportunity to provide the social qualifications that legitimise everything you have said. Any awards, grants, support slots with major artists or festival sets are a great way to leverage a brand bigger than your own to solidify yourself with a reader.

Once you are happy with your full length bio strip it back into each shorter format and save all three into one document. At the bottom of the document be sure to include any relevant media quotes you have, links to current photos as well as your social links.

Now if anyone requests a biography you have the perfect document to send them regardless of what they are using it for.

Take your full length bio and put it on your website, Spotify profile, triple j unearthed profile, Bandcamp profile, Facebook about section and anywhere you can think someone may stumble upon when trying to find out more about you.

Rules of Thumb

Some simple things to keep in mind when writing:

Write in the third person (it will feel incredibly cringey to write about yourself like this, but it’s the format)
Use your personality and brand identity. You don’t need to sanitise the way you write or who you are as an artist, your bio should be an extension of that personality.
Avoid long sentences. It helps keep a reader engaged.
Keep it up to date. Don’t set and forget your biography should grow and change with you.

Can’t AI Do This For Me?

Yes, yes it can. Kind of. It still kind of sucks but it can do most of it for you.

Any Large Language Model like Chat-GPT, Claude or Llama will be able to spit out the solid foundations of a bio pretty quickly if your provide it the right information and prompt it correctly. Follow these steps to get your bio written through AI.

Answer these questions.
Enter the following prompt:
Hello,
I need you to write a band biography for me using some information I will give you and a format to follow.
The artist name is XXXXXXX and I need you to stick to a hard word limit of 250 - 400 words maximum. Please use English UK paying close attention to your use of s and z.
Here is the information about the artist in a question and answer format.
COPY AND PASTE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Please interpret this information but don’t do anything with it yet. Next I will give you the format.
HIT ENTER
Enter the following prompt:
Okay, now I need you to write the biography following the format:
1. Introduction: Use one or two sentence to quickly define the artist and what they sound like.
2. Music: Go deeper into the artists sound. Define the genre, vividly describe how they sound, name the artists they sound like.
3. Story: State the artists origins, where they are now and what their future goals are. Keep it short.
4. Achievements: Include the artists achievements succintly. Any awards, grants, support slots with major artists or festival sets etc.
Please ensure you stick to the 250-400 word limit.
HIT ENTER
Copy and paste what is gives to you into a separate document. Edit and make sure you are happy with it. AI will tend to write in tropes and over used descriptive language. It is regurgitating our language back at us the best it can, which is often extremely flowery. Trim it back, make it work for you.
Enter the following prompt:
Thank-you for helping me write my biography. I’ve made some edits to make it match my brand/style a bit closer.
Are you able to take my edited biography and provide a 50-100 word version and a 100-200 word version too?
COPY AND PASTE YOUR EDITED BIO
HIT ENTER
Take the two new version and add them to the document where you edited the full length bio. Read through them and ensure they work for you and again fix the language. Also double check the word length, AI isn’t great with word limits.