Music Bio Advice: 8 Tips for Writing a Musician Bio that Wows Your Audience

How to Write a Music Bio

The purpose of your music artist bio is to introduce you and your music to the world. Your bio needs to be informative as well as creative if it is going to make an impact on those you wish to impress.

Impress? Yes, you want your musician bio to impress. Even though you may feel that your music should speak for itself, you still need to provide fans, agents, journalists and others with some compelling words about you and your music so that they decide to engage further with you. You want them to read your music artist bio and think "wow, this musician sounds interesting. I want to learn more. I may just give them some of my hard-earned money/time/space".

So what should be in your music bio?

1. Introduce yourself. Start out by saying who you are and what you do. "Jane Z. Smith sings traditional blues songs" conveys your name and style clearly and economically.

2. Use plain language to present yourself professionally. This is not the place to be cute, cryptic or ironic (unless that's part of your band's image and branding).

3. Don't make them guess. Please, please, please don't say that your music is unclassifiable. Not only is it a boring cliche, but booking agents need to know what kind of music you perform in order to book you in the right venues. Think of it this way: if you love Thai food the best, and you're really craving Thai food tonight, and there are literally thousands of restaurants in your city, which restaurant would you choose: "Yummy Thai" or "Mystery Restaurant"? I thought so.

4. Keep it short. The shorter your bio, the more likely people will be to read the whole thing. Start out by writing everything that comes to mind, and then edit, edit, edit. Ideally your bio should be no more than a couple of paragraphs long. As songwiters know, much can be conveyed in a few words!

5. Showcase some of the most important achievements of your career. If you’ve received awards or performed with other well-known artists be sure to mention that. This will allow your audience to know that your talents are respected by others in the industry.

6. The first couple of paragraphs should be given to what is going on right now with you and your band. If you are expecting to have a new album or CD ready for release soon, give the date so that your fans will be ready to purchase it. Give dates and locations for where you will be if you are going on tour.

7. Give some personal background. Your fans will want to know what made you want to enter the music business, and how and when you met the members of your band. Let your audience know what adversities you had to overcome in order to get where you are today.

8. Ask for help. Writing a bio on yourself is different than any other kind of writing. Almost everyone finds it difficult to write about themselves. Where to start? What to include? More to the point, what to leave out? You're a musician, not a technicial writer. So ask a writer friend to help you with your bio, or consider using our musician bio template or band bio template to get a professional bio in the correct style and format.

Let's face it, writing a music artist bio is not easy. In fact, writing your bio is probably one of the most difficult things you'll have to do in your music career. The good news is that once you've written a good basic music bio, you'll only have to update it for various situations (e.g. longer, shorter, focussing on a specific audience).

If you use these tips to help you write a music bio, you will certainly create a compelling story that will help your music career.

 

A bio template makes writing a music biography quick and easy!

Does writing a music bio seem like just one more task on your long to-do list? Are you unsure about your ability to present yourself in the best possible light? If so, get a fill-in-the-blanks music bio template written specifically for a musician. You'll have it all done and complete within the next 20 minutes.